Virgin by Day, Witches by Night

DAY 12: Spanish class with my tutor Rosa was going pretty normal -- we reviewed some more helpful verbs -- until she mentioned a card game called Cuarenta, which is Ecuador's national card game -- so much that every year there are championships for money. For the whole second half of my morning class, I asked her to teach me, and we just sat at the table playing cards. We got weird looks from the other students and professors who were still trying to figure out the difference between the two verbs for "to be." It was a perfect way for me to "learn my numbers."

For our weekly Friday class trip, all the students and teachers from morning and afternoon, including Anita from Sweden and Pamela from London, hopped on a bus for El Panecillo, the big towering mountain in the Old City that overlooks all of Quito. Mike, My Spouse In Air Quotes was there too, having enrolled at the same school for his first day, despite his attempts to find a Spanish school where you could learn new vocabulary while lifting weights.

"Dude, that girl is hot," Mike said on the bus. He was referring to a young-looking Ecuadoriana. "What age would you give her?"

"Twenty-four?" I guessed.

"Ha, you'd give her twenty-four. You want it to be twenty-four."

"Yeah, it's hard to say around here. I wish I could give them all twenty-four -- like those girls in Catholic school uniforms everyday at two."

"I know! And they travel in packs too! It's like a Britney Spears fantasy every afternoon."

THE PUBLIC BUS DROPPED US OFF along its route about 3/4 up the mountain and we took a minivan taxi for the rest. At the top of the Panecillo stands La Virgen de Quito, a towering statue that overlooks the city. We managed to bargain down a group discount for entry into the statue, despite the ticketers disbelief that Navid was a student. (His stammering in Spanish gave it away.)

After taking pictures of the view from the highest point in Quito and a group picture, we toured around this exhibit on the mezzanine level about the history of the Panecillo and the Virgen de Quito. The guide conducted the presentation in fast-talking Spanish, only to received confused looks and respectful "Sí"s from the class. After ten minutes, she opened up the floor to questions and I think I spoke for everyone when I simply asked, "¿Que?"

WE ALL HOPPED ON A PUBLIC BUS back to the New City. I sat with Pamela La Tarta, for whom it was her last day of school. She told me her situation -- the same situation of many that I've come across -- how she was sick of her job around the age of 30 and just quit to travel for a year. (Sounds familiar.) She was leaving Quito and headed south, so we swapped e-mails and made tentative plans to meet up in Bolivia.

Pamela and I were joined by My Spouse In Air Quotes for lunch. We went to an Italian place in the backpacker district where Mike ate the unwanted crusts of pizza from my plate after his arroz con pollo.

I DIDN'T HAVE CLASS in the afternoon, but I went back to school anyway. Rosa told me that she had the whole afternoon to kill in the city before hopping on a night bus for Cuenca, and that we'd try to get a game of Cuarenta going. We played in the school lounge and got some other unoccupied professors to join in. Not only did I learn how to play the four-player version, I learned from Fernando, co-owner of the school, how to play with style and how to use trash talk to psych out your opponents despite their pleas, "Pero, soy tu profesora!"

"WANNA GO MEET SOME ECUADOREAN GIRLS?" my Aussie "brother" John said immediately went I got home. He was originally going to leave for Cuenca in the morning for Cuenca's independence weekend celebration, but decided to stay another night for Quito's Halloween festivities.

"Sure." And the three of us left.

The Ecuadorean girls John spoke of were four girls he had met in the popular touristy city of Baños a couple of weeks before. They were all law students at the University in Quito. We met them at a cafe, where John immediately went to go help one of them write an e-mail in English to his buddy -- leaving the other three with me and Arne. (FYI: Arne is the German "brother" formerly known as "Ani"; he read my blog today and corrected me.) I suppose the natural course of Spanish language education is to go from verbs to flirtations, and we tried our best. We got mixed results, but they liked us anyway.

My surrogate brothers and I took a break from the Ecuadorianas to go home for our family dinner with Blanca. Arne ran into Luisa, the German-speaking Russian girl from the day before, and brought her along. She wasn't hungry, but joined in on the Spanish dinner conversation while sipping on a cup of colada morada, Ecuador's traditional festive drink, a sort of thick sangria made with blackberries and other fruits and served hot.

After dinner, Arne went off with Luisa, leaving John and I to meet up with the girls.

HALLOWEEN WAS ADOPTED BY ECUADOR, solely as a reason to party and act silly like the Americans. I mean, why not have an excuse to dress up five-year-olds as the killer from Scream and have them demand candy from door to door?

Earlier in the year, the president of Ecuador, in an effort of national pride, declared that Halloween was prohibited in the country, as it is the holiday of another country -- the overpowering country that nobody likes that starts wars based on hunches at that. But everyone in Ecuador made a fuss about the decree. In fact, Blanca teaches eight-year-olds in the day and and thought a declaration to prevent little kids from having a little fun was ridiculous. Mike once said, "What, they can adopt our money but not our customs?"

However, two days before Halloween, another branch of government agreed with the public and said Halloween was okay. I suppose that makes it a "treat" and not a "trick."

Halloween wasn't nowhere as big as it is in New York's big parade where you can dress up as a nutsack and give away peanuts, but it was a big deal nonetheless. The sidewalks of Avenida Amazonas, the main street near the backpacker district, were filled with people in costume and vendors selling masks and those hairband things that make it look like you have a knife stuck in your head. John and I witnessed all this as we made our way to grab a drink while waiting for the girls. Two of the girls eventually came over and told us to meet them at the Mongolian grill down the road where they were still having dinner.

At the time that this blog entry was written, I didn't recall the names of the girls. I'm really bad with remembering names. If you were ever introduced to me at a party, I'd most likely tell you right off the bat, "I probably won't remember your name, but it's nice to meet you."

One of the four girls went home, so I only had three names to hear and forget immediately. No matter, it was Halloween and one girl was wearing all black with black eyeliner.

"Soy una bruja," ("I am a witch") she said. "Somos las tres brujas."

For the purposes of this blog, I will refer to them as The Three Witches.

THE THREE WITCHES WANTED TO TAKE US OUT DANCING and lead us out of the comforts of GringoLand and into Quito's real nightlife. We walked to a nightclub district in another area of the city without a white person in sight. John stuck out like a Big Mac at a vegan convention.

We went to Papillon, a trendy-looking night club popular enough that there was a line out the door about 40 people long. We managed to make our way to the front, where the bouncer checked our IDs. He looked John and me over real quick and denied us. The Witch In Black pleaded with the bouncer, but he said it was because our boots were too sporty-looking -- even though he had this look on his face that said, "Dude, you fucking gringos don't belong here."

SINCE MY FIRST NIGHT IN QUITO, there was always loud music emenating from a particular night club in the center of the backpacker district -- til the wee hours of the morning on any day of the week. The club is No Bar, and it is arguably Quito's most popular nightclub whether you are a gringo or not. I've heard it's so good an any given night, so much that it should be called the "Yes Bar" if you know what I mean.

We waited on line for only about ten minutes and paid the $3.50 cover -- which included a free drink. Inside, it was a cross between a really wild frat party and a rave, all inside a space reminiscent of a VFW hall. In the center of the club was a bar/stage where various bartenders in costume entertained the masses by throwing out prizes, juggling with fire and passing around a beer funnel. ("Once it hits your lips it's so good.") Girls dressed up in nurse outfits with garter belts danced on top of the bar and it was very much like Comedy Central's The Man Show. Coming from New York, the whole thing was no big deal to me, but I was wowed when they set the bar on fire. I'm told this is a nightly activity.

John, The Three Witches and I danced the night away as the DJ spun a mix of every 90's American hip-hop, Latin Dance, and trancey hard house. Glow-in-the-dark light sticks were passed around and I broke mine to make a pen with glow-in-the-dark ink, hoping it wasn't toxic. (It's not, is it?) We drew hearts and shapes all over each other in the dark. The Shorty Witch signed the breasts of The Witch With The Cleavage.

At the end of the night, The Three Witches walked us to the end of our block. The Witch With The Cleavage's Spanish was a bit too fast for my comprehension -- or was it the beer? -- but I managed to figure out by use of hand gestures that she wanted me to call her. Either that or she was telling her right ear to hang ten.

John and I got back to the house as Gabi was just getting in from work. I asked John for the number of The Witch With Cleavage, but unfortunately, he didn't have it like I thought he did.

The next day, John hopped on a bus for Cuenca.

Erik Vs. The Volcano

DAY 13: "Did you go out partying for Halloween last night?" a Danish blonde asked me in the back of a truck at 8:03 in the morning. She saw that I looked pretty exhausted.

"Yup," I answered all groggy-eyed, waiting for my coffee to kick in. "And you?"

"No."

"Ah, you're smart."

And so began my trip to Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano in the world, just 90 minutes south of Quito by car.

While climbing to the peak of Cotopaxi is a popular to-do for many travelers, I wasn't really interested in the inevitable altitude sickness of it. Instead, I had signed up for a day trip with the Biking Dutchman, a mountain bike tour group based out of GringoLand, recommended to me by a fellow member of South American Explorers. Despite its name and location, the tour guide was Latino.

Originally I signed up for a two-day trip, but four people were needed and I was the only one registered. I switched over to the one-day and lucked out with three Danish girls, Lisa, Dort and Luisa, each in Ecuador on a work visa. However, our little group of four was unexpectedly joined by a group of 24 British people in a big volunteer-tour group, with their own bus that we always had to wait up for.

We drove southbound on the PanAmericana highway to the park entrance to pay our park fees. From there we drove up the volcano on a twisty and bumpy road comprised of volcanic rock and soil, passed trees and wild horses. It would have been an American SUV owner's dream if s/he ever left the suburbs.

We parked at a parking area at about 14,800 ft. above sea level, just a couple hundred meters short of the snow line. It was the vantage point of a spectacular view of the Valley of Limpiapungo, the common countryside in between three other active volcanos. We unloaded our gear in the frigid air while guys in ATVs and dirt bikes had a field day nearby. Then we geared up in helmets and enough safety gear to protect our bodies from falling, or a freak occurance involving a sudden barrage of hockey pucks.

Tired of waiting for all the Brits to get their stuff together, our guide Fernando let the four of us go ahead to the rendezvous point. It got warmer and warmer as we descended down the slope of the volcano -- clenching our hand brakes the whole way -- down a twisty path of loose volcanic rock and soil. The bumpy ride could have made any guy feel like his testicles were in a paint stirring machine at the Home Depot.

At the first rendezvous point, we waited for all the Brits to come on down. Their ages varied from young to really old, so it took quite some time. Luisa complained that it wasn't fair that we paid the same amount as other tourists who didn't have to deal with all the waiting, and we all decided that we'd complain back at the office back in Quito.

YOU KNOW WHEN YOU FIRST START PLAYING a racing video game and you always start in the pole position, but gradually end up in 16th place because all the computer-controlled cars are better than you? Well that's how it was with me en route to the second rendezvous point, which was only about fifteen minutes away on level ground. I blame the fact that my gears were messed up and my chain fell off at one point, and the one time my shoelaces got caught in the main cog like spaghetti wrapped around a fork. It didn't really matter to me because I was surrounded in a land reminiscent of Tolkien's/Jackson's Middle Earth. I eventually caught up with the rest for lunch near a creek.

I switched bikes for the last leg of the day. We traveled like Hobbits on bicycles on an undulating path through the Valley of Limpiapungo, passed cows and kids riding on mules. It had been the most amazing scenery I had seen on my Global Trip so far.

I WAS EXHAUSTED WHEN I GOT HOME in Quito, and Blanca made me a refreshing juice. I say "made" because that's the way it has been in Ecuador so far. I don't think the people here believe in buying big half-gallon cartons of juice -- every juice I've had has been made with freshly-squeezed fruits, blended with water and a little sugar. I figured my stomach had already strengthed because I had no reaction to Blanca's latest batch of OJ.

It was a Saturday night but I was too exhausted to go out partying or anything. Instead I vegged out at my new favorite internet cafe around the corner, run by a German guy completely fluent in Spanish. I imagined he was a total computer nerd back in Germany who just got sick of sitting in front of computers all day at home and traveled to Ecuador to sit in front of computers all day in Quito. I swear the guy never leaves the place -- he's the only guy here from 8am to 11pm -- and he just sits at the front desk surfing the web while listening to 80's new wave songs and Cirque du Soleil soundtracks.

After updating The Blog, I just wandered into the hip internet cafe/bar Papaya.net to see who was around, and found Navid on a computer using Yahoo! Messenger next to two guys using the messenger on Gay.com. I think it subconsciously inspired us to go across the street to Zocalo, a trendy bar with ambigously gay chi-chi drinks. Navid and I had a midnight snack and a nightcap before I went back home and slept for a nice ten hours.

Pee On The Trees

DAY 14: After breakfast, I updated The Blog at the German computer nerd's internet cafe around the corner. Outside, all the stores were closed for Sunday and even in GringoLand it looked like a ghost town. Arne said it reminded him of the movie 28 Days Later.

In hopes of finding people out and about, Arne and I walked to the Parque El Ejido, on the south end of Avenida Rio Amazonas, home of the weekly Sunday markets. On the way there, a woman approached me and asked for directions in really fast Spanish.

I've discovered that 80% of blending in as a local is to just pretend to understand what they are saying -- even if it's all in one ear and out the other like a telemarker's pitch. I stood there for a moment pretending to think I knew where she was referring to and simply entertained her with a "Yo no se."

THE MARKETS AT PARQUE EL EJIDO were similar to those at Otavalo, only not nearly as big. Vendors sold the usual things: clothes, crafts and cheesy souvenirs one can buy for friends back home so they can unethusiastically say "Oh, thanks" before putting them on their office desks to collect dust for years until they rediscover it's there when they get fired or laid off. On the outskirts of the market, local artists and painters displayed their works, including contemporary and surrealist ones.

"You know why there are no people sitting under the trees?" Arne asked me. I looked around and sure enough, no one was leaning under a tree reading a book, mediating or making out. "It's because people pee on the trees."

This I believed immediately because a couple of days before I had been in the park and see it myself. In fact, on our way back down Amazonas, we saw a random guy just peeing on the sidewalk.

We walked to the other end of Amazonas to the Parque La Carolina, a much bigger park full of Ecuadoreans. I realized that's where everyone went.

Inside the park was a man-made lagoon (picture above) filled with paddle boats. The lagoon was a great addition to the park, but it was all fun and games until someone's dog fell in and couldn't get out -- which was all fun and games until that person's other dog fell in to save the first dog and couldn't get out. The two dogs doggie-paddled for their lives until a human chain was formed to drag them out.

I got a foot-long hot dog with the works and a Coke for only a buck and ate it on the bleachers that overlooked a big skatepark, where a troupe of BMX bikers were putting on a show by jumping over willing participants laying on the ground. Then Arne and I just leisurely walked the entire length of the park, passed many fields for multiple simultaneous game of soccer.

Still, no one was sitting under a tree.

BLANCA MADE A DELICIOUS SPAGHETTI for us when we arrived back home. As usual, Cometa was snooping around near the table, looking for scraps. Arne and I really lucked out with Blanca and her homecooking because I had heard stories of other host families that only served rice and beans everyday. Navid told me that his first night with his host family, the father simply came home from work with a bucket of KFC.

After dinner, Arne and I went to Zocalo, the trendy bar in Gringoland with the fancy drinks. We sat near a roaring fireplace -- it was a bit nippy outside -- and discussed over a couple of rounds our plans for the future in life and in travel. We made tentative plans to meet in Rio and Berlin and toasted with a "¡Salud!"

On the way back home, we noticed Navid at a computer at Papaya.net and dropped in for a visit. Just as every night I ran into Navid at an internet cafe, I had walked in on an informal session of internet sex he was having with a girl in the States via Yahoo! Messenger. Each night I'd arrive, he'd write "Oh, Erik is here now," but this time I decided to intervene for a bit:

Girl: ...i am thinking of you (naked!)
Me: this is erik
Me: put your clothes back on
Girl: seriously?
Navid: seriously...Erik and friend are here
Navid: they just read that
Girl: hello Erik...I am enjoying your blog
Me: thanks
Me: get a room you two

Arne and I walked back home to leave Navid go about his cyberstud ways.

Keep the comments coming guys! Save all your compliments from Instant Messenger and post them here!

Mallrats

DAY 15: My morning started as always: getting out of bed to take a piss. However, this day it was different. In the center of the bathroom, atop a small drain gate, were three turds.

"Uh, pienso Cometa hace una cosa en el baño", I said to Blanca making breakfast in the kitchen.

"Ay! Es Tina, el gato!"

While she went to get a broom and a dustpan, Arne woke up for his morning piss. I banged on the door to warn him.

"Que?"

I pointed at the turds.

"Oh."

IT WAS MONDAY, the third day of a three-day weekend in honor of La Dia de los Muertes, or The Day of the Dead. Unlike the big street parades of Mexico, La Dia de los Muertes in Ecuador is a quieter affair, an opportunity for people to go to the cemetaries to visit their loved ones and have picnics on their grave plots, so they can share a meal in spirit. Should I ever be buried in Ecuador, I'd like a surf and turf platter, please. Oh, and an order of that Bloomin' Onion thing from Outback steakhouse.

To some people La Dia de los Muertes was a sacred day, but I discovered that to most people, La Dia de los Muertes simply translated to "The Day I Don't Have to Go to Work." And what else is there to do on such a day? Go away to the beach for three days, or go shopping.

QUITO IS A GREAT PLACE. I mean, where else can you go riding down the side of the tallest active volcano in the world one day, and the next day hang out in a modern mall amongst alienated youth? Not even in New Jersey I can tell you.

I walked down to the Mall El Jardin, just a ten minute walk from mi casa. With the city practically empty, there was little air pollution and a nice change for my lungs.

Mall El Jardin (picture above) is more or less your basic modern American mall, complete with the stores no mall can do with out: Cinnabon, GNC and Radio Shack. Well, we could do without GNC but definitely not Radio Shack. Anyway, I went to a small bookstore to buy an Ingles/Español dictionary and found one for just $3.70. Of course I only had a new twenty dollar bill on me and the woman just stared at me with this disappointed look in her face, like I had thrown a bright red sock in her laundry's white load. She picked up the phone and made a call like I was a wanted criminal -- "It's another one of those punks with a twenty dollar bill" -- and had to leave the store to get my change.

I WANDERED AROUND THE MALL'S THREE LEVELS, and discovered that there was a supermarket called SuperMaxi. It was just like any old supermarket in the States, only with a much bigger Spanish section. I blended right in with my Latino façade -- no one gave me the kind of stares that someone like Arne would get -- and I simply bought some supplies with no problem. I was even able recognize when the cashier asked me if I had a frequent shopper card.

NO MALL IS COMPLETE WITHOUT A FOOD COURT, and no food court is complete without a Taco Bell. There was also a Pizza Hut and the obligatory salad/sandwich places run by people who most likely hated their jobs.

The smell from KFC beaconed me the way an animated odor does in a cartoon, and I couldn't resist but go there. I managed to order -- in Spanish -- two pieces of chicken, fries, a Pepsi and a cookie. This was extremely easy to do as it only required me to say, "Uh...combo dos, por favor."

As I ate, the original recipe was a bit bland, and I figured Colonel Sanders probably had some customs problems exported all eleven of his secret herbs and spices.

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY OUTSIDE and I intentionally got lost in unfamilar neighborhoods. No one was around and I almost felt like the guy in that Twilight Zone episode. Unlike that guy, my glasses didn't break -- but my bowels did. I walked like a robot trying to get my ass to "reverse swallow" it all, but luckily I was in the vicinty of the South American Explorers clubhouse and dropped my load off there.

Membership definitely has its privelages.

THE REST OF THE DAY was pretty boring. I just wandered around like a sophomore with nothing to do on a college campus. I ran into the two Danish blondes from the volcano trip, and Navid as always. For dinner, Blanca made a mashed potato loaf thing -- it looks exactly as you picture it -- stuffed with chicken and vegetables.

I was pretty exhausted after dinner and just passed out on my bed while doing my homework.

La Gripe

DAY 16: I woke up at about 3 a.m. feeling a little feverish. I popped a couple of ibuprofen and went back to sleep. I woke up around 7 with the sun feeling better, but still a little feverish, but managed to finish my homework. I had to write a story in Spanish using as many of the new verbs that I had learned. I wrote one about the final battle between a secret agent and an evil scientist -- in the end, the secret agent defeats the him, but not after saying "Hasta la vista, PUTA!"

My tutor Rosa saw that I wasn't my usual energetic self and said that I probably had La Gripe because I'm not use to the rapid change in temperature.

On a normal November day in Quito, the weather is like this: you wake up and the sky is blue, the sun is shining and you look out the window and say like Ferris Bueller, "How can I possibly be expected to go to school on a day like this?" But you go to school anyway since you already paid for it in advance in cash, and sit with a tutor for four hours and conjugate verbs. After class, you walk around to soak in the sun and its 80 degress F temperature and maybe grab something to eat. As you eat, you notice the clouds come in and the temperature drops from the mid 80s to the mid 50s. A sprinkle turns into a drizzle, and a drizzle turns into a rain, and the only thing to do is to vegg out in an internet cafe and write a blog entry whose third paragraph is about how fast the weather changes on a normal November day in Quito.

I TOOK IT EASY the rest of the day. I hung out in my bedroom and just rested for a bit (picture above) after lunch. Then I went out to wander in the area and ran into the two Danish blondes. I tagged along with them as they went back to the Biking Dutchman office to complain about last Saturday's trip to Cotopaxi, how it wasn't fair that we couldn't do everything that had been promised because we always had to wait up for the 24 other Brits of varied ages and previous biking experience. We thought we'd have to make a strong case to get any compensation, but our guide had already explained to the owner the situation, and the woman gave us each ten bucks back and a free T-shirt. This works out great because ten bucks can get you about nine 30 oz. bottle of beer here and the t-shirt could be used as a change of clothes when you vomit all over the shirt you're were wearing.

I went back to school to pay off my housing. Carmen the director of the school had nothing to do so we played a round of Cuarenta until Mike, My Spouse In Air Quotes, dropped by to pay off some of his debts.

"What are you eating over there, at your family?" Mike asked me. "For breakfast for example."

"Fresh juice, a big plate of fresh fruit, eggs and croissants."

"Wow, you get eggs? I only get a roll with some cream cheese and some pineapple marmalade."

I told him Arne and I would be out next week and that he should try to switch to Blanca's house.

"Eggs. Man, I love me some eggs," he said.

THE RAIN LET UP late afternoon and I walked back to the Mall El Jardin and practiced my Spanish by asking around for an adapter for my camera, so that I could simply use my Sony MemorySticks in a 3.5" floppy drive. I looked all over but couldn't find one. I even went into Radio Shack since they say "You've got questions, we've got answers." But their answer was "No tenemos."

At least I managed to leave the store without being asked for my zip code.

AT DINNER, Gabi saw that I looked a little tired and I told her that I felt a little sick. "Oh, la gripe," she said very nonchalantly before asking me to pass the juice. "Es común." ("It's common.")

Gabi had grown up in a house where, for the past ten years travelers had been coming and going, and she probably had seen hundreds of them suffering from La Gripe. I was just another number and was glad it wasn't just me.

After dinner, I still felt a little grippy but still had some energy to go out partying with Arne, since he invited me to hang out with his friend from Texas who lived in Quito and apparently knew all the cool spots and lots of chicas. However, we I asked him what the plan was, he said he wasn't going anymore because he too was feeling a bit sick. Apparently, La Gripe had gotten him too.

So I popped an ibuprofen and went to bed at nine and slept for ten hours.

I woke up the next day, a refreshed new man. La Gripe had come and gone.

Everything That Has A Beginning Has An End

DAY 17: For the past week and a half, I had fallen into a routine in which I'd wake up, shower and have breakfast with Arne and Blanca. Things were different this morning. It was Arne's last day in the house, since he was planning to move to his friend's place a couple of days before he starting work in a hospital the following week.

Since Arne didn't have school, he was in no rush at breakfast -- nor was Blanca because she wasn't going to school either. As a teacher, she and all of her fellow teachers across the country, were on strike. They were sick and tired of only making ten dollars a day.

I've realized that although Ecuador uses the US Dollar, everything is about 20%-25% the price that it is in the States. For example, a private room in a hostel in Quito is about eight bucks a night. Multiply that by five and it's forty, which sounds about right for what it is. Cab fare from the airport into town is six bucks; multiply that by five and it's thirty. A 32 oz. beer at this bar we always go to is $1.12; multiply that by five and its some number that I can't do in my head because I suck at math and went to art school.

By this rationale, Blanca made just fifty bucks a day in American standards, which is still pretty shitty when you have to deal with annoying kids all day. Blanca almost spit out her tea when I told her minimum wage in America was over five bucks per hour.

I LEFT MY GERMAN BROTHER IN HIS BEDROOM (picture above) and walked to school without a compadre for the first time since I began living at the house. However, it was also my last time, because it was my tenth day in my ten-day crash course.

My tutor Rosa and I went over more verbs conjugated in the past tense and I felt pretty good having had a grasp on it. I was feeling really confident in my Spanish -- until I asked about the difference between para and por, which put my brain in a mind twister again. (Both words mean "for," but are used differently depending on the context.)

For my final "exam," I simply had to -- with no help from Rosa or a dictionary -- write a message in the school's guestbook. I wrote:

Cuando estuve perdido en Quito hace dos semanas,
quise apprender Español y encontré la escuela Beraca.
Con mi profesora Rosa, aprendí muchos palabras que
voy a trater no olvidar...pero depende de las cervezas!

¡Muchos gracias Beraca y Rosa!

It was a tad more polite than what I had written in my homework the day before: "¡Hasta la vista, puta!"

IN THE AFTERNOON I grabbed a quick shawarma for a buck -- that's five bucks if you can do that math in your head (I used a calculator) -- and went back to school for a quick last game of Cuarenta. Then I met up with Arne and his friend Jurgen and we hopped in a cab to Cinemark, a couple of miles away. Cinemark is just like your average American big multiplex theater -- video games, popcorn, soda -- but with one major difference: a ticket is just $2.60. I couldn't even imagine what a matinee price was.

While almost all movies that are exported from Hollywood into other countries aren't released until months after the US release, producer Joel Silver promised a worldwide release date of the third installment of the Matrix trilogy. Posters for "Matrix Revoluciones" were everywhere with its tagline "Todo lo que tiene un inicio tiene un fin" ("Everything that has a beginning has an end.") Just about every teenager that just got out of school was there. I fit right in.

"It's gonna be in English right?" I asked Arne as we sat in the theater as the advertising slides ran.

"Yes, it has to be. I think of all Latin America has films in English with Spanish undertitles. That's how it was in Mexico when I saw Snatch."

The previews began, the first one being for Disney's latest soon-to-flop animated picture Brother Bear. To my surprise, it was entirely dubbed in Spanish.

"Uh, it's in Spanish," I pointed out to Arne.

"Ja, that's weird."

I knew I took had just completed a crash course in Spanish, but I wasn't sure I was ready to sit through an entire movie dubbed in it. The only thing I probably would have picked on would be "¡Señor Anderson!"

The trailer for S.W.A.T. came on, in English with Spanish subtitles, which was a pleasant surprise. I thought perhaps they only dubbed the animated movies in Spanish, but then came the trailer for El Retorno del Rey (Return of the King, the third installment of El Señor de los Anillos). It was entirely dubbed in Spanish with voices that closely matched those of Gandalf, Samwise and Gollum.

The green ripple of the Warner Bros. studio lot appeared and zoomed out to the WB logo. I had no idea what I was in store for until the main title sequence began. Sure enough -- and luckily for us -- The Matrix was in English with Spanish subtitles. However, most of the dialogue consisted of simple, deadpan one-liners using the verb "believe," that I probably could have figured it out had it been dubbed anyway.

Allow me to digress for a bit with my comments on Matrix Revoluciones without giving it away. I enjoyed it. In fact, I thought it was much better than the second one; it didn't rely on kung-fu or that 360° Bullet-Time "Matrix Effect" as much as Reloaded. Instead, it relied on good ol' fashioned war action, with an amazing edge-of-your-seat sequence of machines vs. mechs. Sure the dialogue was pretty lame, and the love story was unmistakenly written by a guy, but it in the end, it was definitely worth at least the $2.60 I spent on it.

THE GERMAN GUYS AND I took a cab back to GringoLand for happy hour. Well, at a buck a beer, it's always happy hour. Afterwards, Arne went his separate way to his new place while I went back to Blanca's. Arne's room had been cleaned out already, and I was an only son. Arne missed out though, because for dinner we had nice big juicy steaks.

Later on, I ran into Navid in an internet cafe. He was busy involved in a cybersex four-way chatroom on Yahoo! Messenger, and just for the cafe's hourly rate of just ninety cents. Even if that translates to $4.50 in the US, that still ain't bad.

Ecuadorean Jedi

DAY 18: Back in the days when I had a 9-5 American corporate job, I was only alotted the miniscule vacation time of two weeks. Two weeks, compared to other countries, is an embarrassingly short period of time and I would always use these two weeks to rush through a destination, doing one thing after the other after the other to pack it all in. I slept very little in attempts to make two weeks seem like three.

But there was always a guy in the hostel dorm who would never been in a rush. Usually it was a British or Aussie guy travelling for a year or looking for work, and some days he'd just sleep in or just run errands in the day. I never understood how he could do that -- there was so much to do! So much to see! So much to experience! My God I've wasted too much vacation time wondering about this guy's situation!

However, now that I am free from the cruel, American two-week restriction, I can just sleep in or run errands while I'm away. I'm THAT guy.

SO, FOR MY LAST FULL DAY IN QUITO, I just took care of some unfinished business. I spent a couple of hours in the German computer nerd's internet cafe, uploading a video file for a client in New York that had been rendering on my laptop the entire week before for 170 hours. Then I did some research on programming Cascading Style Sheets for another project I have for a client in Boston.

I was walking down the Avenida Rio Amazonas when I heard whistles coming from above. It was Rosa and her fellow profesora Areitha sitting out on the school's terrace, enjoying the temporary sun. "Ey, chico!" they called. I went upstairs and joined them.

In just 40 hours of class time -- and 10 additional hours playing Cuarenta -- Rosa and I had become friends. We sat and talked on the terrace and it was just like our friendly conversations in class, only for free and without the annoying interjection of verb conjugation charts. Rosa and Areitha vented about their jealousy of foreigners, how they can travel whereever and whenever, while most people in Latin America are stuck, having to worry about visas and the like. I almost felt ashamed of myself for being so lucky. However, they did speak of their positive influences of all the foreigners they teach. Foreigners showed them that unlike Latino families, it's just not cool to live under your parents' roof until the age of 40, labeling the orange juice in the fridge. Rosa thought it was important to find yourself in your twenties, and felt like she was on some sort of a crusade to change the Latino mindset.

I WENT SEARCHING for an adapter for my digital camera's MemoryStick, so that I could use it in a standard 3.5" floppy drive. I've discovered that not every internet cafe has an available USB port, so I thought it was best to get one before moving on. I searched all over, looking for the "Centro Comercial" that Blanca had told me about, only to realize that "Centro Comercial" wasn't the name of a particular mall, it simply means "mall." In a city with five or six of these, simply asking around for the "Centro Comercial" was like asking "Where is the mall?" in the northern New Jersey or Los Angeles suburbs. The only thing more inane would be asking "How much is this?" in a 99 cent store.

I eventually found Orve Hogar, a electronics superstore that had what I was looking for. It was behind a display case, so I had to get a salesman to help me. At over $100 -- which is like being $500 -- the salesman was confused as how a local kid who looks like he's in high school could afford such a thing. Everything became evident when I stammered in my Spanish and flashed my American passport for the credit card check.

ORIGINALLY, I DIDN'T PLAN ON SPENDING SO MUCH TIME IN QUITO, but it seemed to be the perfect training ground to acclimate to the South American language, culture and food before really starting to travel. As this was my last full day in Quito, I decided to challenge myself with the ultimate test: take a public city bus by myself without the help of a professor.

The buses are confusing since there are so many that go to different destinations, but all stop at the same stop. It's even more confusing when you don't know exactly those destinations are and you still can't tell your left from your right without having to thinking about it, even in English. Most of the gringos avoid the bus because its confusing and just hop in a cab.

But I managed to find the right bus, pay the fare, and sit next to a local guy, without any strange looks. I felt like I had just completed the training with Yoda on Dagobah and was ready to move on.

I stopped into school for a quick game of Cuarenta (picture above), and then bid Rosa goodbye with the traditional kiss on the cheek. The apprentice had left his master. I had gone from Ecuadorean-Looking Gringo to Ecuadorean Jedi.

ARNE WAS NOW LIVING IN A HOUSE HOSTEL with a Texan guy he knew, who apparently was a super stud and knew everyone around -- including all the chicas that knew how to party. He had been described to me as the type of guy where if you'd just mention his name, you'd be an honored guest just by knowing him. He'd been living in Quito for two years, of which a good majority of that time was, as Arne described it, spent "drinking and fucking." If there was any one way to party your ass off for a final night in Quito, it would be with this guy.

I went over to the hostel/house where Arne was staying at. Forrest, the Texan, was sitting in the living room just chilling out watching MTV-Latino. "Hey man!" he said in his native Texan accent. Arne did the introductions and Forrest, a ball of Texas energy, went off about this and that and how are you and where you been and yadda yadda yadda. If English wasn't my first language, I probably would have only caught about three words of it. He told me the tentative plan, how we'd meet up at some pub called The Turtle Head to meet up with people before heading out to a club at ten.

"There's gonna be some Dutch girls and some girls who just came down from San Francisco and some Ecuadorean chicks too," he said like a pimp. "It gonna be a good time, man. Hold up, lemme call my boy."

He picked up the cordless phone, switched to Spanish in a Texan accent and tried to get his friend to come out and party like Vince Vaughn in Swingers.

"Bullocks!" he said, using the British expletive in a Texan accent. "He's down in Argentina. It don't matter 'cuz my boy is coming down after class, and it'll be good. You guys hungry? 'Cuz I can just call my boy up and he'll send stuff over, no problem. Cheeseburger, double meat, double cheese, double bacon, whatever."

"I'm okay," Arne said. I explained that I was still having dinner with my family.

Forrest dialed a new number. "Hey man! I'm getting hungry over here, send me over something to eat..."

I wasn't sure if I had to kiss his hand and call him the Don.

Forrest gave me the his phone number and told me to call him up later after I had dinner. I went back home just in time because Blanca had locked herself out. She had been in a conference all day discussing the teacher strike and was running late.

For The Last Supper, we had corn and potato soup followed by baked fish. Gabi had gone out to a concert with her friends, so it was just me and Blanca. For our final dinner conversation, she told me about the one time a Japanese student lived at the house and introduced her to wasabi, of which she spread on like ketchup while the guy was in the kitchen. Needless to say, she is no longer a fan of Japanese cuisine.

I CALLED UP FORREST but he wasn't there. So I just walked down to The Turtle Head, a couple of blocks away from GringoLand to see if they had gone there already. I walked into the Scottish pub and was surrounded by gringos. Surprisingly I fell out of place. Who was this local boy coming into the bar?

I broke the mystery when I just spoke in my regular American accent. "You know Forrest?" I asked the barkeep. He was a tough looking Scotsman with his arms crossed.

"Forrest? Forrest Gump?" he said in his heavy Scottish accent. I smiled.

"Nah, Forrest. Guy from Texas," I said. Surely just mentioning "Forrest" would get me somewhere.

"Ha ha ha... Run Forrest, run!" the Scotsman said. Let me tell you there is nothing more entertaining that seeing a big burly Scotsman making himself chuckle by saying "Run Forrest, run" in a thick Scottish accent.

"I think I know him," a nearby barmaid said.

"You seen him around here?"

"No."

I walked back to GringoLand.

JURGEN WAS STANDING ON THE CORNER of Calama and Mera in front of Papaya.net, looking as confused as a long lost German shepard -- one with a ponytail at that. "Have you seen Arne?" he asked me.

"Uh, I think he went out with the Texas guy to a club."

"Oh really, he told me that would meet here around ten." It was 10:05. "I was hoping there would be live music at the bar over there, but nothing tonight."

"Oh, I don't know then. I'm pretty sure he went out with the Texas guy." I explained how I had just come from The Turtle Head and couldn't find him either. I went into Papaya.net to check my email while Jurgen stood out there on the corner some more, waiting for Godot. After about ten minutes, he came in and told me he was going out for a beer.

Realizing that we had both been stood up, I joined him.

We went to Choco Loco, the bar we always went to since it had the cheapest prices on beer in the neighborhood that we could find. We sat over a couple of Pilseners in the brisk, cold evening air.

"I don't think they are coming," he said.

And so, for my last night in Quito, I just hung out with Jurgen in a bar. I didn't know much about him anyway since he was always just speaking German when Arne was around. We talked about travel and such.

"In Germany, we only get four weeks of vacation. Four weeks is nothing," he said.

"We only get two weeks."

"That's less than nothing."

Around midnight, all the bars in GringoLand were closing. This surprised me because weeks before, all the bars were open all night and every night was a party night. I thought that perhaps it was the sudden drop in temperature at night, or perhaps too many people back in school or something. Quito nights were over too.

I bid Jurgen goodbye and walked back home. I worked on a bit of freelance work before turning in.

Movin' Right Along

DAY 19: I had my last breakfast with Blanca in the morning, which was a good and bad thing. A good thing in that I was getting fresh food and a lot of it served to me on a ceramic platter with no effort on my behalf. A bad thing because -- just as every morning I'd been living there -- it was way too much food for me so early in the morning and I almost had to force myself to eat the whole thing. My stomach simply can't handle a huge plate of fruit three inches tall plus an egg and bread and juice and a cafe con leche. I think for once I would have actually preferred just having some McGriddles.

Before Blanca went off to work, I said my goodbyes. She told me where to leave the keys and wished me a good trip and luck in my writing. She was always proud of the fact that a writer was living in her house; it was her dream for Gabi to become a writer until she enrolled in hotel management. So as a souvenir, I gave her an autographed photocopy of my published story. And she couldn't have been any happier. (Well, she never had McGriddles in the morning, so maybe she could have.)

I did some web design work for clients in Boston and Portland, and uploaded it at the German computer nerd's internet cafe. I cleaned my room and packed my bags and walked back to school to say my goodbyes. I noticed there were bags all packed and ready to travel in Navid's classroom, and thought maybe he'd leave Quito with me after his class. He told me they were actually Mike's (My Spouse in Air Quotes), who was planning to go to Baños for the weekend and that he might go with me. But Mike was busy somewhere flirting with some girl in some cafe somewhere.

A Japanese guy walked in, all disheveled and pissed off from being stuck in traffic. I figured he was a student there for quite some time because he was pretty fluent in Spanish. However, he spoke Spanish in a Japanese accent with the inflections of an angry samurai. It was like watching a kung-fu movie dubbed in Spanish.

I waited for Mike to show up while playing cards with school directors Carmen and Fernando, and this crazy Japanese woman who was always there just hanging out. We were really getting into a game of Cuarenta, getting loud and rambunctious when the Japanese Samurai Guy came storming in. "ESTA ES UNA ESCUELA! NO ES UN LUGAR POR JUEGAR LAS CARTAS!" His nostrils flared up like a Sumo wrestler who had just been told to go on a diet.

We all apologized but then secretly made fun of him as we continued to play cards quietly.

It was getting late and the daily afternoon rain was coming and I didn't want to wait for Mike any longer. I figured perhaps traveling by myself on a bus would be more secure than tagging along with an obvious gringo anyway. I hopped in a cab and went off to the bus station to find a bus for Baños. The taxi dropped me off on the street near the station, but I managed to get lost trying to find the entrance. I was trapped in some maintenance area until I asked a guy how to get inside. He permitted me to go through his office into the main lobby as long as I bought a ticket from his company, but I was lured by another one that was just about to leave. I left the two to argue in the hallway as I hopped on the bus bound for Baños.

NAVID NOR MIKE WEREN'T AROUND to accompany me, but my old friend La Gripe came back for the ride. The combination of bus fumes and the rain really got me sick and I just sat on the bus for four hours all feverish. It's an awful thing when you have La Gripe; you just hate everything, from the bumpy ride, to the annoying teenagers who are sitting near you, to the ultra-cheesy Spanish love ballads they play over and over and over. And you thought elevator music was bad. Despite all the previous warnings I had gotten that a tourist should never fall sleep on a bus, I just passed out anyway, holding my bag. I knew I blended in anyway because the teenagers tried to strike up a conversaton with me like I was one of them.

The nap did wonders because it helped pass the four hour ride and made me feel a little better. I was dropped off in the commercial district where the streets were lit up and everyone was out and about. I checked into the first hostel I ran into and got a nice big room with cable TV and a private bathroom with hot water, for just seven bucks.

In less than ten minutes of wandering down the block looking for a place to eat, I saw Hugo, the crazy Dutch guy from my school back in Quito. He was sitting outside of a pizzeria with his friend Alberto, just drinking beers. "Ey, Hugo!" He pulled up a chair for me.

We had dinner and drinks as we caught up on our latest adventures. Alberto was funny because he had dropped out of Spanish school, and was always at a loss for words. Whenever he couldn't think of the word to use, he'd just saying "shitting" or "fucking" while using air quotes, or just say "Choco Loco." For example:

Me: "What's around here to see?"

Alberto (in a Dutch accent): "There's...uh...'fucking' things to do. Choco Loco, Choco Loco!"

We sat and people watched, waving a hello to all the pretty chicas. However, it wasn't all pretty chicas. "It's so typical Dutch," Hugo said. He noticed that about every five minutes a Dutch person would walk by. "I hate it. I didn't come to South America to see Dutch people." But sure enough, he'd see another one walk by.

As the night progressed, fewer and fewer people roamed the streets and all the stores closed. The two of them were staying at a family run hostel of which the owner also owned a bar around the corner. We chilled out there for the rest of the night as four teenagers danced to the 50 Cent album in the back. The owner tried to hook us up with some girls, but they didn't seem interested and just left.

Hugo and Alberto went off to another bar, but I just went back to my hostel to rest up because I was still a little grippy. On TV, I switched between a cheesy softcore and Sesame Street until I fell asleep.

Hot Bath

DAY 20: Baños is a town in a valley surrounded by lush green mountains, one of which gets really excited and ejaculates liquid hot magma every so often. In 1999, the Volcán Tungurahua erupted, causing a major evacuation of the town, and since then the town has been on guard. In Baños, after you look up the weather forecast, you look up the volcano forecast.

A major eruption hasn't happened in three years, and in this time, tourism has been booming for Ecuadoreans and foreigners alike. The word "baños" means "baths" and it is here people come to soak in thermal baths naturally heated by the volcanic activity below. The closest and most popular of these baths are the Piscines de la Virgen, a facility on the east end of town conveniently placed adjacent to a scenic natural waterfall.

The pool of the hot water was about as sanitary as public pools go, at least I had hoped. Without the use of chlorine and the presence of natural sulfuric sediment, the water (picture above) was yellow-greenish and so murky that once you stuck your feet in you couldn't see them. I know what you may be thinking -- public pool, yellowish tint, warm water -- because I thought the same thing.

However, no one seemed to mind and I didn't actually see any public urination -- they save that for the streets and the trees in the park, remember? -- so I did as the Bañosians. I blended in pretty well and joined the Ecuadoreans when we all stared at the four gringos playing cards on the side. I thought that one of the girls might be American until I noticed what looked like two brown hamsters growing from her armpits.

After a while it finally sunk into my head that taking a hot soak on a sunny 80° day just seemed silly, so I exited the questionable water and just wandered poolside to take some photos of the waterfall. A guy on a lounge chair noticed my big Canon AE-1 SLR camera. "Amigo," he called to me.

I managed to figre out through the Spanish words I knew that his name was Pablo and that he, his wife and son were on vacation from the city of Guayaquil. Recognizing the international index-finger gesture for "take a photo," I figured he wanted me to take a picture of him and his family.

I thought it was an unusual request but I entertained him anyway. I bid him farewell, but as I walked away he started saying something I couldn't understand. Soon, I realized that he thought I was one of the many guys around the area with Polaroid cameras that sold instant photos to tourists. I wanted to explain that it wasn't a Polaroid camera and that I was using slide film that had to be developed, but I didn't know any of the Spanish words for any of that and just took off really fast.

THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON I wandered the streets of town. I bought a soda from one of the street vendors -- who didn't give me the bottle. Instead she poured the drink into a baggie and wrapped it around a straw. I thought that perhaps it was a good idea for recycling purposes, but it just felt weird drinking out of a bag. It was like walking around town sipping on a breast implant.

I saw the Basilica Notra Señora del Rosario and its adjacent Spanish courtyard. I walked over a bridge that went over a scenic gorge to a trail that went up a mountain for a great view of the city. Unlike Quito, it remained a sunny day and didn't rain.

IT'S A FUNNY THING about the backpacker trail. Everyone seems to have the same book, Lonely Planet's South America on a Shoestring, and knows the same narrow information. Everyone seems to start in Quito, take Spanish for a couple of weeks, and then head south. By this rationale, every so often a "graduating class" of a Spanish school in Quito eventually moves on their way down to the cities mentioned in the guide, which is why I ran into Hugo the day before and Anita, my Swiss schoolmate that afternoon. She was with a friend and had just arrived the night before.

"What are you doing tomorrow?" I asked.

"I don't know. Probably nothing. Whereever we walk, people see that we are foreigners and hand us flyers and flyers for all the different things you can do here. It's all pretty much the same as everywhere else; horseback riding, rafting, see the volcano," she said. "What are you doing?"

"I might rent a bike and ride down to Puyo," I said.

"Ah, you have the Lonely Planet book too, huh?"

There was no use hiding the truth.

I RAN INTO NAVID at random just as he was sitting down to dinner after just arriving into town, and so I joined him. Later, I went out to the bars with him and Hugo -- a sort of Class of The First Week of November 2003 reunion -- but not before taking a nice hot shower.

I wondered if the water coming out of the shower head was the same murky volcanic water from the thermal baths, but I tried not to think about it too much. Golden showers just aren't my thing.

The Gorge

DAY 21: When I ran into Dutchman Hugo on my first night in Baños, he told me about his adventures since he left Quito, one about the time he and his friend Alberto were threatened to be beat up by a group of villagers unless they respectfully ate cuy (fried guinea pig) with them. (They snuck out the back door and ran away.)

"Quito is weird because you go there and even though you are traveling, you aren't traveling because it is just like any big city," he said. "Only when you leave Quito and start seeing the smaller Indian villages does the real traveling begin."

By the time you finish reading this blog entry, you'll see what he means.

ONE OF THE RECOMMENDED THINGS TO DO around Baños in my Lonely Planet guide is to rent a mountain bike in town and ride the scenic mountain road to the next city of Puyo, 70 km away. There you can take a bus back to Baños with your bike strapped to the roof.

Originally, Navid was thinking of going with me, but in the morning we couldn't find each other at each other's hostels. We both ran errands and had breakfast separately but finally ran into each other at 11, which to Navid was too late to get going since he felt a bit out of shape. He decided to stay in town, and so I went it alone. No matter, I figured, the bike ride is recommended in the Lonely Planet guide, so there must be tons of gringos doing the same thing.

I rented a cheap dual suspension bike for $4 all day, which included a helmet, lock and chain, a tire repair kit and a map. The young man at the bike shop pointed out the highlights of the road up until the 22km point where a store existed. There, most bikers hopped on a truck back to Baños. Whether I would end my journey there or press the extra 48 km to Puyo I didn't know yet.

I RODE THE HIGHWAY OUT OF TOWN and it was more or less downhill, with only small sections of pedaling upwards. I rode passed a dam and a hydro electric power plant, through a dark tunnel that cut through the mountain, and eventually made it to the beginning of the dirt road that hugged the gorge of the Rio Pastaza.

Along the dirt path, I saw the Agoyan waterfall, slicing its white water through the greenery like an aquatic bolt of lightning. There were some nearby smaller waterfalls along the trail for a refreshing mist amongst the hot weather. There weren't many other bikers around -- I only noticed three other pairs of cyclists -- and we all suffered from dust clouds whenever a car or bus would drive by. I was wary of cars driving too fast on curves -- one nearly skid off the edge.

At the overlook of the Manta de la Novia Waterfall, there were two options to cross the river and see it up close: via cablecar or via a wooden foot bridge reminiscent of the one at the end of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. Finding out that the option that would fulfill a childhood fantasy of mine costed nothing, I chose the latter. Most people were doing the same, and I could only assume they all had the same fantasy -- or were just as cheap as I was.

I walked to the center of the bridge and admired the view and made my way through the jungle like environment near the base of the falls, spawned by the abundance of moisture. At the base of the Manta de la Novia waterfall, I took some photos, including one with myself. I walked back over the Bridge of Doom, but not before taking in another view with daydreams of yelling "You want the stones, let her go!"

No one was around to appreciate it.

I RODE TO THE STORE that the bike store guy mentioned where I could hop one of the many private trucks for a ride back to Baños. A boy came up to me and said something in Spanish I couldn't understand. I assumed he was asking if I need a lift back into town and I simply said "No, gracias." It was still a beautiful sunny day and I figured I might make it to Puyo after all.

I continued down the road, down the valley. I rode passed some more random waterfalls and through a small town. One thing I didn't see were fellow bikers, which started to become a scary thing.

I rode about another 10km when I noticed it getting really dark. Clouds were coming in and I could see in the distance a storm coming. I was near a checkpoint in the road by a construction zone, which was all coned up. And if that wasn't enough of a sign to start heading back the other way, a loud thunderous boom filled the air from above.

I decided to be smarter than a teen in an 80's horror flick and turned back the other way.

A SHADOW HUNG OVER ME the entire way back. The storm clouds chased me like an evil force and I was always trying to get ahead of the rainline. However, it was all uphill from there and the rain eventually caught up with me. Depressed, wet and alone, I had no choice but to pedal my way back to the store with the boy and the trucks. Nothing made me happier when I saw it from around a bend and I got a second wind that took me there.

The boy asked me the same question in Spanish that I didn't understand, but this time I said, "Uh, sí. A Baños. Y una Coca-Cola." I went to a table where (I assume) his father was, and he went to get me a cold Coke. I drank about half the bottle outside in the rain when the father went into the house and walked out with a sawed-off single barrel shot gun in one hand and a shell in the other.

I don't know about you, but I had never been in this sort of situation before -- alone, wet, stranded at a mountain house in the middle of nowhere with a guy who suddenly has a gun and a bullet in his hands. I'm surprised I didn't hear any banjos.

Two thoughts entered my mind: 1) Erik, you should really get the fuck out of here; and 2) Erik, you should really get the fuck out of here. Fortunately, these thoughts passed as soon as I saw the guy with the gun walk right passed me and down a path down the valley. I figured he was going to hunt something for dinner.

I looked down the gorge but there were too many trees and it was too steep to get a good vantage point. Then, amongst the pitter patter of the rain, I heard a loud gunshot.

I asked the boy "Que es eso?" ("What is that?") and he said something in Spanish I couldn't comprehend. But he said it so nonchalantly like it was no big deal, that I figured his father was just killing an animal for food afterall. But the man came up with his gun and nothing else but what looked like an empty beer bottle, after of which I thought 3) that I should really really get the fuck out of there.

I didn't know what to do and I was starting to think that the boy's original question had nothing to do with a ride back to Baños since none of the guys with the trucks were budging when I picked up my bike.

THERE WAS A TEENAGE COUPLE nearby, waiting on the side of the road. By the way they were dressed I could see they weren't from the villages and were probably from the city. I approached them as they were trying to hail a bus back into Baños. Just my luck, within one minute they flagged one down and I ran with along with them with my bike. I helped the conductor stick the bike on the roof and tie it down as the rain was still coming down.

It felt so good being on that bus, driving passed the sights I had seen just a few hours before when the sun was still shining. However, I was still wary of pickpockets on the bus, and kept a hold on my bag as we went through the dark tunnel.

The sun was coming back out as I arrived at the Baños bus terminal. I got my bike off the roof and rode it to the store -- which was closed. I didn't know what to do so I locked it to a nearby post, hoping they wouldn't charge me another day for not getting the bike back in time. But I went back later on the in the day and found the guy to check in and returned my helmet as well.

WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE HOSTEL, I inserted my key but the the door just opened before turning my wrist. I searched my belongings and fortunately nothing was missing -- nothing important was left out in the open and all my valuables were hidden and locked down. My bed was made and the garbage had been emptied so I figured it was just a cleaning service. Perhaps the woman I told in the morning that I was staying another night never told the person who cleans up the rooms that I wasn't leaving yet.

With so much excitement in the day and my body all sore, I just stayed in all night. The first Matrix movie was on broadcast TV (in Spanish) and I knew just then that watching a lot of fake Hollywood guns beats confronting a single real gun any day.

Liquid Hot Magma

DAY 22: Navid had moved to my hostel since his other was too noisy, so it was easy to find him for breakfast. We played a quick game of generic Jenga before looking for the other thermal baths of Baños on the outskirts of town.

Following the Lonely Planet guide, we continued walking down one street where we should see a footbridge that leads you over a creek to another road that brings you right to the facility. On a map, everything looks flat, but in reality the road goes up a mountainside like a street in San Francisco. It lead us up into the suburbs and eventually out of town and on a dirt road with calves, cows and bulls. Although I had heard that bulls are color-blind, I wasn't about to take chances with my bright red shirt.

The trail went nowhere and we decided to head back down the mountain. We ran into a gringo who also had the Lonely Planet guide and also went the wrong way. We told him that the directions must have been wrong or something and so he tagged along with us. "Thank you for doing that exercise for me," he said. "I would have gone all the way up if you hadn't told me."

His name was Olf -- no relation to the alien puppet Alf -- a Swedish man perhaps in his 40s. (Being from Sweden, there's a possibility he could have been related to the Swedish Chef muppet, which could in turn made him sort of related to Alf -- or perhaps Kevin Bacon.) Olf was backpacking through Ecuador for a month and was also interested in checking out the Piscina al Salado, a bigger facility than the Piscines de la Virgen in town. We eventually found it, with its multiple tubs of thermal water at different temperatures. Everyone was playing Goldilocks to find the one that was "just right" -- including this old Spanish guy who would bounce back and forth from the cooler ones to the hottest one. In the hottest one, he'd just sit in the corner and whisper to himself an orgasmic "Aye ya yaih!" I tried to avoid him as much as possible.

ON THE WAY BACK DOWN INTO TOWN, we had a clear view of Tungurahua, the nearby volcano that once erupted and evacated the city in a mad panic in 1999. Right before our eyes, we saw it begin to smoke on a clear day. (picture above) After lunch with Olf and Navid, I walked back to the vantage point in the suburbs with my video camera to capture it on tape. I stood there, totally mesmerized by the dark plume it was making, and nearby townspeople were looking at me as to think, "What, you've never seen a volcano bellow in your hometown? Feh."

When I got back to my room I realized they might have been looking at me strange because I had accidently put my shirt on backwards in the changing room and my tag was flapping in the wind.

THE SOUNDS OF DRUMS FILLED THE STREETS, so loudly that I could hear it from my room. I ran out to see what it was and right down the main road was a parade. I love a parade! I followed the parade route and walked alongside the participants who were sporting team uniforms. It led into a big school courtyard where some sort of pep rally was going on. Hundreds of students were there in uniform with parents and relatives. I snuck in and blended in with the crowd without any questions and before I knew it I was standing along side them for the national anthem and applauding whenever they would applaud. However, it got pretty boring for a while so snuck out.

I ran into Olf and having nothing to do, we went out to a sidewalk cafe for beers. An empty bus blasting salsa music from its speakers cruised by. "That's the bus for the volcano tour," he told me. He had gone on it the night before and recommended it since it was only three bucks.

A BOY CAME OFF THE BUS and approached us with flyers. He looked about nine years old, but after the usual Spanish 101 questions, I learned he was actually twelve, his name was Pablo and that he was from Baños. For a twelve year old, he was a turning into quite the salesman, determined to get a sale, yet not too pushy. He'd make a good used car salesman one day, or perhaps even a guy that sells camcorders at Best Buy. Navid joined us and Pablo was determined to get another sale. He even brought over a photo album of the different tours that are available and talked non-stop about each photo. I interupted his sales pitch when I pointed to a girl in the album and asked him if it was his girlfriend. He paused for a quick moment smiled and told me no, probably because his was at the age where girls were "icky."

The bus came to pick us up and we hopped on the roof while most of the other tourists stayed inside. Pablo's friends Juan and Alberto hopped on too and we cruised through the moutain roads in the nighttime air playing music, waving at passerbys and dodging tree branches. Pablo remained a complete businessman and pointed out all the sites to see along the way.

The driver brought us up a mountain a look out point of the volcano not much better than the one I had in the afternoon, although at night you could see distant specks of red lava glowing in the darkness. The mediocre view of the volcano was complemented by a specatuclar view of the city.

The guides made a campfire since it was a chilly night and served us tea spiked with rum. For kicks, I was going to try and sneak some of the spiked tea to Pablo, but he had already snuck a small cup which he shared with his friends. However, they seemed to be more excited looking at themselves on my camcorder with the night vision on.

Soon after, the female tour guide got everyone's attention and gave us a little lecture on the volcano, completely in Spanish. A British tourist had a question that the guide didn't understand, and seeing that I had been talking to Pablo in Spanish all night, she asked me to translate. So I did:

"I only pretend to know Spanish. This entire trip I've just been pretending. I have no idea what she just said."

"Gracias," the guide thanked me.

ON THE WAY BACK DOWN the mountain road, Navid, the boys and I were on the roof again, this time standing up, pretending to surf. I don't know if it was the alcohol in the tea, but the three boys just started getting all hyper, dancing to the music and making each other laugh. I kept watch ahead and warned them for branches and wires. At first Pablo wasn't into the dancing, but he ultimately couldn't resist. Eventually they all started getting really hyper, took their shirts off and waved them in the air like Ecuador had just won the World Cup. I was glad to see Pablo not be a salesman and just be a kid again.

Back in town, I gave Pablo a dollar as a tip and told him to share it with his friends. Navid and I went out to a food stand down the block -- the only place open that time at night -- for a snack. Pablo, Juan and Alberto walked by to say hello. I saw that they had already used my dollar on ice cream.

Crossroads of Ecuador

DAY 23: Whenever I'd walk around with Navid on the streets of Baños, newly arrived backpackers would always stand out with their big packs strapped to their backs and their smaller daypacks strapped in front. This is like trying to simulate being both pregnant and a camel at the same time.

Whenever I'd see one of these new people, I'd say "Oh look, a new arrival." Navid and I were sitting at breakfast when I said it again after noticing a man walk by.

I left Navid in Baños as he wanted to stay longer and see other things, and hopped on a bus for Riobamba. Inside was the "new arrival" I had seen on the street who was actually a new departee.

His name was Chris, an Indian-looking retired math teacher from Toronto, and he was making his way to Riobamba for the same reason I was -- and every backpacker on the bus for that matter, including an English-looking guy that I noticed in the cafe I had breakfast with Navid in.

RIOBAMBA ISN'T PARTICULARLY THE KIND OF TOWN you send a postcard from. To the Ecuadoreans, it is a mid-sized city at the crossroads of Ecuador, where the main mountain highway in the Andes meets the highway that goes to the shore. But to a backpacker, it is the starting point of Ecuador's famous scenic train ride to Alausi, where one gets to ride on the roof. Olf, who had done the ride already, told me to get to Riobamba by early afternoon the day before departure and buy a ticket by 4pm, which is advice not mentioned in my guidebook.

The bus arrived at 1:30 and dropped all of us pregnant camels off at the bus station. I split a cab with Chris and the guy I noticed in the cafe in Baños and we rode to the area near the train station.

"What's your name?" I asked the new guy.

"It's Pepijn, but in Spanish I suppose it's Pepe," he said.

"So...Pepe?"

"Pepe's fine. Where are you from?"

"New York."

"Ah, New Amsterdam. I'm from Old Amsterdam," the Dutchman said.

The three of us shopped around for a cheap hostel and settled on one two blocks from the train station that was recommended by Lonely Planet. The three-story walk up was decent with a nice common area with a skylight. Chris tried to get a private room but they were all out of them and just decided to get a dorm share with Pepe and me for just $5 each. Our room had a TV and a terrace. Next door was a German girl named Anna who had gotten there earlier and snagged one of the private rooms.

Later I discovered that Chris probably wanted privacy because he was having stomach problems and probably wanted to suffer from the normal case of the runs in peace.

PEPE AND I WENT OUT TO LUNCH at one of the usual almuerzos places where you get a whole lot of food for just a buck fifty. We chatted and learned we were both a part of the whole big internet rush at the turn of the millenium, having survived two more years after the bubble bursted. He too was just traveling for a long time before looking for another job to "see what happens."

We wandered around town, connecting the dots on the map in the guidebook which pointed out places of interest. We saw the Parque Sucre and the cathedral. We visited the Museo de Arte Religioso, which featured kitschy-looking religious artifacts including paintings and a sculpture of Jesus with a small cock. The museum's prized possession was a gem-studded gold cross monostance that, as Indiana Jones would say, belongs in a museum.

BY FOUR O'CLOCK, the line for train tickets was already starting to take form. Pepe ran into an Aussie named Andrew he met in Quito, and I ran into Anita from Spanish school who was with her friend. At the ticket window, we all paid the expensive $11 which, according to Hugo, is a jacked up price for the usual southbound tourists because the trip northbound is only $3.50.

When we found out a passport was needed for the ticket purchase, almost everyone in unison reached down their pants. Hidden pockets and money belts are a popular thing.

ANDREW, ANNA, PEPE AND I went out for coffee and afterwards, I just went wandering around some more by myself. Unlike Quito or Baños, Riobamba is just a regular working-class town with no tourist sidewalk cafes. I grabbed some beef on a stick at one of the nighttime food stands near the train station and then chilled out at the hostel, wondering how many people would giggle at my little "Jesus with a small cock" picture prank.

A Trainful of Tourists

DAY 24: Once upon a time in Ecuador, the railway system was the fast way to go north or southbound through the Andean countryside. Over the years, this railway system was replaced by the faster and cheaper bus network. But there is one train that still runs, so that tourists can ride on the roof and take pictures of the countryside faster than the locomotive.

Chris, Pepe and I were up by 5:30 and out of the hostel by six. When we got to the train station, there were probably 100 people on the roof already, mostly from big European tour groups. We met up with Anna and Andrew and snagged a spot on the roof amongst the sea of people.

The train wasn't a fancy train by any means; it was merely a freight train with a hard metal roof with a two-inch piece of steel railing which kept you and your bag from sliding off. Vendors capitalized on this by renting cushions for a buck each, which was well worth it.

At seven on the dot, the gas-powered locomotive started moving with its trainful of about 250 tourists behind. We rode out of the city and out of the suburbs and into the countryside. We waved at villagers who waved backed at us, as dogs chased the train, barking until they tired out.

Anna, Pepe and Andrew were on my right while Chris was on my left, just enjoying the scenery. Unlike everybody else, he didn't have a camera and just took it all in with just his eyes. Everyone else -- including myself -- took pictures like crazed paparazzi of the lush Andean countryside where animals would roam freely and graze. Daredevil vendors walked back and forth as the train cruised from 20-40 mph, selling snacks. In Ecuador, they'll do anything for a buck.

WE STOPPED IN GUAMOTE, a small town along the train route. If the train only exists for tourism, then it seems the town only exists for the train. Vendors sold textiles and sodas and banana empanadas. I stretched my legs for a bit and chatted with Anita, who was on the car ahead.

Afterwards, the landscape dramatically switched from lush green farmlands to arrid, desert-like conditions. The train zig-zaged through the mountains as the sun blared from above, which really heated things up when the train derailed in a desert valley. This of course got the tourists all excited and snap happy and everyone got off the train with their cameras to record the event on film. Luckily the train staff was used to this sort of thing and successfully rerailed the wheels by use of wooden planks and rocks.

We arrived in Alausi about six hours after leaving Riobamba and stayed on the train to go down the Nariz del Diablo (The Devil's Nose), a steep mountain with a series of rail switchbacks for a train to come down. The Devil's Nose promised to be a major thrill, but it was sort of anti-climactic -- we had seen better views on the first six hours of the train ride. It seemed the only reason to go down The Devil's Nose was to be stuck in a valley so that there would be no escape from the vendors selling Devil's Nose t-shirts and pins, and conductor's hats. The conductor's hats were $7 and were very convenient if, in the middle of nowhere in the Andes, you had the uncontrollable urge to look like one of the Village People.

Pepe and I got off the train at the base of the "nose" for some photos and climbed back onto the train as it started moving again. To get to my spot on the roof, I fulfilled a childhood cowboy fantasy of jumping from the roof of one car to another on a moving train.

AFTER SEVEN HOURS, the novelty of being on top of a train wears off and you say to yourself, "Jesus, why the hell am I on the roof of a train under the hot sun for?" Everyone had put their cameras down and just looked beat -- that is, until there was another derailment. As soon as the train wobbed and the engine stopped, a short indigenous vendor who was sitting next to Anna got up, smiled and started yelling "Colas! Colas! Colas!"

"Alright, everyone get off the train to take pictures again," I announced. Sure enough, the paparazzi responded.

THERE WAS A LONG LINE at the baggage claim when we arrived back in Alausi, so I decided to make a quick trip to the bank a block away to get some cash at the ATM since I had spent my last five bucks on an advance bus ticket to Cuenca. There was no ATM, but luckily they could cash traveller's checks. However, they had to hold onto my passport until they could get a photocopy made -- which wasn't going to happen until the teller finished dealing with the six other people on line. Meanwhile, my bag was still on the train which was about to leave.

I risked leaving my passport at the bank and ran to the station. Luckily, Pepe had told them where I was and they put my bag away. I grabbed it and ran back to the bank where the copy still hadn't been made. Meanwhile, my bus was about to leave. The irony was, I needed to get cash because I used my last bit of cash for that bus ticket.

Luckily, another guy came over to make the photocopy since the teller was just too busy and I got my passport back and hopped on the bus in time. Everything worked out in the end because an advance ticket was necessary since some woman was making a big deal about assigned seats. Three people who didn't buy advance tickets had to sit on the floor or stand for the entire bumpy four and a half ride through curvy mountain roads.

We arrived in Cuenca at night. Chris, Pepe and I split another cab and another room and went out for dinner. I was too tired to do anything else after sitting on my ass on trains and buses all day.

For The Better of Humanity

DAY 25: Being in Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city, is like being in Old Spain. With its well-preserved Spanish colonial houses and cobblestone streets, it's no wonder it was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. The red-roofed houses, the plazas and cathedrals make it one beautiful city with -- I later discovered -- beautiful women.

Pepe and I went out for breakfast and then wandered the maze of streets. We walked through the main Plaza, the Parque Calderon, with the Old Cathedral on one side and the grander New Cathedral on the other. Inside the Iglesia Santo Domingo, elaborately painted walls led up to an alter where the Virgin Mary was dressed in traditional Andean clothes.

PEPE CHECKED OUT OF OUR HOSTEL DORM because his bed was too short for his tall Dutch body, and moved across the street. His replacement in the room was a vegetarian vagabond from Oregon, who had been on the road for sixteen months already with no immediate plans to ever return to the States. After spending seven months living in little villages in Central America, he had come to the realization that his life's calling was to provide fresh vegetables for the peasants so they could have a "proper diet" other than just meat and corn all the time. He had a whole plan laid out with obtaining seeds and distribution and so forth and was determined to better humanity.

He got me thinking: Shouldn't I be on some lofty crusade to help better humanity instead of wandering around to get into adventures so that I can make daily blog entries? Shouldn't I be out changing the system instead of just being a tourist?

These thoughts lasted about ten seconds and I went on my way to explore the sites. (Perhaps some day in the future.)

I BUMPED INTO PEPE on the street at random, and since neither of us had an agenda, we accompanied each other in our wanderings of the city. We walked out to the uncrowded plaza near the Iglesia de San Sebastian and then to the crowded weekly Thursday market. We saw a small, unimpressive collection of Incan ruins on the outskirts of town and then wandered back to the Parque Calderon, where salsa music played softly on the park's speaker system. Pepe sat back on a bench and smoked a cigarette as two indigenous women ran by in their big shirts and felt hats.

THE TEATRO CASA DE CULTURA is an art film house in town which shows indie films from the international film set. On the mezzanine level of the lobby is a cafe/bar, where Pepe and I sat for a drink. I was telling him about my daily blog.

"I sent out a story today as well," he said.

Pepe was also a former dot-commer turned aspiring-travel-journalist who was also keeping a blog for an audience back home in Holland. He too was writing stories and taking photos in hopes of making a living of it one day. It's funny the people you meet on the road; you often find mirror images of yourself from parallel Bizarro dimensions.

(Pepe's site is at http://home.planet.nl/~lucke050. It's in Dutch.)

The lobby of the theater started filling up with people and it started to look like a big premiere of a new film -- except without the red carpet or fanatics yelling out "Big fan, big fan." Pepe and I did some investigative journalism and discovered that we had stumbled in on a beauty pageant that the universities of Cuenca were having. Gradually more and more college students filled the lobby to cheer on their female classmates.

"Alright, now I'm excited," I said. This was much more interesting than planting crops in Central America! What better way to better humanity than to watch hot college girls strut their stuff on a stage?

Yes folks, I'm a guy.

We tried to get in the entrance near the cafe, but were denied with our lack of tickets. But we managed to sneak in through a door on the orchestra level and eventually made our way near the stage. We made ourselves look like press photographers.

The event started with a college cover band that, out of all people to cover, performed Avril Lavigne songs. Then, one by one, contestants strutted up on stage in sexy outfits as a computer projected their stats and zodiac signs on the wall. There were about twenty girls -- all beautifully stunning -- aging from 17 to 28, and Pepe and I joined in with the crowds as each section cheered for its home girl with sparklers, drums, noisemakers, banners and signs. At times it felt like we had stumbled in on a soccer game.

The evening gown competition came after, followed by the impromptu interview. Questions ranged from pre-marital sex to which is more important, love or money? Judges at the front desk took notes as audience members clapped in approval like someone had just given a "good answer" on Family Feud.

Pepe and I were getting our cameras ready for the swimsuit competition -- how could we continue to blend in as press photographers without shooting pictures of girls in bikinis? -- but the competition ended there. Based on the interview, three finalists were chosen, followed by two runner-ups and a winner (picture above). The theater crowd cleared out pretty fast after that, but afterwards we joined a new crowd gathered at the Parque Calderon, and watched a live band play traditional Andean music through the night that wasn't so "complicated."

A Day "On" in Cuenca

DAY 26: In modern life, the "norm" is to work most of the time, with a day or two off to "smell the roses." Well, as I've been "smelling the Ecuadorean roses" all this time (as well as the bus fumes), I needed a day to just do some work. So I took a day "on" in Cuenca.

I gave up my hostel's sixth floor view of the New Cathedral (picture above) and the Iglesia de San Francisco and left Chris, Anita and her friend (who had also arrived in Cuenca and stayed at the same hostel), and moved across the street to the hostel where Pepe was staying at. For just a dollar more, I got a private room, free breakfast and a terrace with a view of the San Francisco market. The room had a desk, which was perfect because I just stayed in and worked on some projects on my computer.

I did manage to take a couple of breaks to wander the streets. I walked through the San Francisco Market and the nearby flower market at the Plazoleta del Carmen. I wandered off the Lonely Planet map to a quiet residential neighborhood devoid of tourists. I saw a woman in a red dress rush down the cobblestone street and wondered why she could be in such a hurry in such a laid back city. Perhaps she forgot to add the fabric softener.

PEPE HAD GONE ON A DAY TRIP to the nearby Incan ruins of Ingapirca, but I caught up with him back at the hostel. He said the site was sort of a let down and felt ripped off plunking down a whole ten bucks on it. On the upside, he also said that he ran into Anna from the train ride and invited me to meet her for dinner.

"Alright, what do you feel like having: chicken...or chicken?" I joked. Actually, it wasn't that much of a joke because one thing about Ecuador so far is, if you want to get by on cheap meals, you are going to eat a lot of chicken and rice. Sometimes your chicken and rice entree is preceded by chicken and rice soup. I haven't had a milkshake here yet, but I'm sure they'll manage to figure a way to put chicken in that too.

Anna knew of a place nearby that sold meats other than chicken and so we went there. I had a fish and shrimp ceviche while the others had pork and fish. It was a welcome change -- finally, something that didn't taste like chicken.

Afterwards, we went to Wunderbar, a bar that seemed out of place in Spanish colonial Cuenca. Anna said it could have been a bar in Berlin or something, with this Euro motif and paintings on the wall. Despite the Euro feel to the place, we were the only tourists there. We sat and chatted over Pilseners and Clubs -- the two Ecuadorean beers -- about travel and life in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

We bid Anna farewell since we were all to go separate ways, but I made tentative plans to meet her in Berlin in the summer of 2004, if and when I make it over there.

Right now, that seems like twenty years away.

Defending Guayaquil

DAY 27: "You know what I heard?" Anita said at breakfast.

"What's that?" I answered.

"That the train derails, for the tourists, so they can take pictures."

I had met Anita in Spanish school in Quito, and we had both finished and headed south at about the same time. She and her friend -- I forget her name -- were having breakfast at the cafe in my hostel in Cuenca and were planning to head to the Peruvian border afterwards.

"I'll probably see you somewhere south," I said.

"Most likely."

However, I was not headed south like most of the backpackers. I was headed west towards the coast, to the city of Guayaquil. Chris was headed that way too and so we met up to split a cab to the bus terminal. Pepe tagged along as well to split it three ways.

I bid farewill to Pepe as he was headed south with the rest. Chris and I got tickets for an express bus for Guayaquil.

AFTER A THREE HOUR DRIVE through ear-popping, motion-sickness inducing mountain roads, we descended down and out of the Andes, through a thick rain cloud and made it to sea level. Immediately the weather transformed from cool mountain breezes to the humidity and heat of the tropics.

We rode another hour through small towns and passed banana orchards, all the while listening to the salsa CDs the driver was blasting. Gradually the rural tropics transformed into the suburbs and into the urban area of the busy Guayaquil bus station.

GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR'S LARGEST CITY (Quito the capital is the second largest), is a sprawling metropolis on the banks of the Rio Guayas. I had received many warnings about going to Guayaquil prior to my arrival: Carmen, my Spanish school's director said the pickpockets are very aggressive. Blanca, my host mother, told me it was straight out dangerous. John, my one-time Aussie "brother" from Quito, once told me that he had taken a bus to Guayaquil, walked around for two hours and then left. His reason: "There weren't any gringos around."

However, I didn't let this stop me.

Chris and I split a cab and a room in a hostel with a private bathroom, TV and, more importantly, air conditioning. After lunch, we wandered into the main part of town. The streets and sidewalks were clean and everything looked nice for a modern city, despite Lonely Planet's suggestion that Guayaquil was nothing more than a big city with lots of crime and traffic.

"I'm really impressed with this place, as far as Westernized cities go," Chris said. "The book almost said to avoid this city."

I wondered if the lack of gringos was due to the semi-negative write-up in the Lonely Planet guide. It's amazing how Lonely Planet controls the direction and opinions of the backpacker set. The thing about Guayaquil is it's a real city. Coming from metro New York City, I can appreciate this. Quito is a real city too, but the tourists often just see GringoLand -- with its backpacker standards of vegetarian restaurants and nightclubs -- and therefore like it much better. Whether you travel to do the same old "backpacker thing" or experience a different culture -- modern or not -- is up to the traveler I suppose.

CHRIS AND I walked the streets and to the main plaza and the plaza near the cathedral. In the plaza, iguanas walked on the lawn like squirrels in the North American suburbs. Nearby was a well-cared for fish pond and turtle pin. Tropical vegetation surrounded us, with bright flowers, plants and mangrove trees.

Surely there was more to this "crime and traffic ridden city" than Lonely Planet had described.

Clean, modern brick streets led to the new riverfront district -- which wasn't around at the time the Lonely Planet guide was written. If the book was up-to-date, perhaps they might have described the riverfront as a beautiful promenade of modern architecture and design with gardens, contemporary wooden footbridges and monuments (picture above), all lines with shops, cafes and ice cream parlors. I got a Baskin Robbins X-Mint and managed to smudge it all over my face.

USING THE POSTINGS ON THIS BLOG, I managed to track down Navid, who was staying at a hostel four blocks from mine. I caught up with him there. He was complaining that Guayaquil was a cesspool -- perhaps influenced by the Lonely Planet guide? -- but that was only based on seeing the seedy, sketchy areas where the hostels were centralized. He had arrived in the city the night before and complained that the people in Guayaquil didn't even attempt to try to understand broken Spanish, unlike Quito and Baños. (This I was okay with me because I couldn't give a shit about tourists in New York's Times Square.)

Determined to change his negative view of the city, I led Navid into the newer part of town with the cathedral and the clean streets. I showed him the iguanas, all of which were leaving the lawn and climbing the trees for the night.

"Hey, it's actually not that bad," he said. "What a difference four blocks makes." We wandered around the riverfront area until dusk, when all the trees and fountains along the river were lit up with sparkly lights.

"Oh, the river front is very beautifully done," Chris said when we bumped into him. The Lonely Planet guide didn't get him down.

EVERYONE IN TOWN was gathered in front of electronics stores to watch the big soccer game on TV: Ecuador vs. Paraguay. It was an important game that led to World Cup contention, and you could really feel the energy of the fanaticism in the streets.

The three of us found a restaurant that had the game on, and we watched along with the citizens of Guayaquil over steak sandwiches and beer. I really wanted Ecuador to win because two years before, I was in Lima watching Ecuador vs. Peru, in hopes of being a part of a big victory street party -- only to have the home team lose. Now was my next chance.

Ecuador lost to Paraguay, 2 to 1.

"I think there's going to be a riot in the streets," I said. But there was none.

WE WENT TO AN INTERNET CAFE where I was hoping I could hook up my camera to upload the much needed pictures missing from this blog. However, I couldn't. Instead, I passed the time looking up flights for the Galapagos. Navid was on the other side of the room, but I contacted him through Yahoo! Messenger.

Me: I'm looking up flights on the Tame website.
Navid: I'm having sex.

Even in a big city like Guayaquil you can stop into an internet cafe and have fun with a little cybersex. And that's something that the Lonely Planet guide never mentioned.

If you have already pledged or donated to The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive and have NOT sent me your address via e-mail, please do so. (I don't have everyone's ZIPs, ya know...) The first wave of postcards will come from the islands hopefully.

Line of Hope

DAY 28: In Spanish, the verb esperar translates into two things in English: "to hope" and "to wait." This is especially noteworthy when you are waiting on the "Linéa de Espera" for a standby seat to open up for the Galapagos Islands at Guayaquil airport. You wait on line and hope to get a flight.

Chris, Navid and I got to the airport without a ticket in hand by eight in the morning, in hopes to get on a 9:15 flight. We thought that since it was the low season it would be fairly empty, but when we got around the corner, we saw a line of about twenty people. We bought tickets anyway and waited on the stand-by line. An agent called over, "Uno mas." ("One more.")

Chris' time in Ecuador was limited, so Navid and I let him take it. We'd try to get the only other flight of the day at 11:15.

"I will wait for you at the airport," Chris said as he rushed over to the security gate.

"Just go ahead. Who knows what will happen to us!" I yelled back.

Ah, the life of a standby airline passenger.

Fortunately, Navid and I managed to snag the first two open seats on the next flight. During the two hour flight to a time zone one hour behind, I attempted to read a Spanish newspaper (with a little comprehension) as Navid tried to figure out the velocity of the plane with his neat little GPS device.

THE MAIN AIRPORT OF THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS lies on Isla Baltra, a small island with desert-like conditions, just long enough to hold a runway so planes do go plummeting into the Pacific. From there, we got our bags and got on line for the shuttle bus to the ferry. It was there that we met Andre, a South African from Johannesburg who lived in Sydney. He was a happy guy -- always smiling -- who had just flown from Quito to the Galapagos without any definite plans either. He had just finished a big contract job in Columbia and was ready for a little two-month period of R&R.

We took a short ferry ride through turquoise waters to the main island of Isla Santa Cruz, where in a blink of an eye, the environment went from desert to tropical. Lush green plants appeared out of the island mist as we rode on another bus for about 40 minutes to the main town of Puerto Ayora.

Despite the Galapagos being such a tourist draw and "must do" on most travelers' and divers' lists, the town wasn't a commercialized "tour town" like I thought it'd be. I expected to see tour operator after tour operator after nightclub after bar, but it still retained a small village feel with townspeople and fishermen just trying to make a living.

Being a Sunday during the low season, most of the stores and restaurants were closed up, but we managed to check out the boat tour deals at the one place in town that was actually open. However, we didn't commit to anything since we wanted to check out the Monday competition. Afterwards, we went shopping for a hostel and settled on Estrella del Mar, near the harbor (picture above). Navid wanted a private room for himself, so I split a spacious double with Andre for just $12.50 each.

In just three minutes of wandering down the town for a place to eat, Navid spotted Chris at a small restaurant, who was just finishing up an arroz con camarones (rice with shrimp) and a beer. Puerto Ayora is a very small town, and with only about 20-30 tourists in town, we were bound to run into him. We joined him for some more beers and arroz con pulpo (rice with octopus).

THE INTERNET IS AMAZING; not only can it provide hours upon hours of unsolicited porn, but it can provide hours of it in remote areas -- including in the middle of the Pacific. Not only was I able to find an internet cafe in 30 seconds, I found one that let me hook up my camera. With everything else closed, I spent the rest of a lazy afternoon catching up on my blog duties while the others let the soft wooshes of ocean waves put them to sleep.

Afterwards, I walked through the deserted tourist area and into the busier downtown area where townspeople were just out and about, running errands or sitting on a stoop. Life here is slow and relaxed like a tropical-sounding Sade song.

There wasn't much to do at night, so I plopped myself on a barstool at a local bar and hung out with the bartender and his friends. For the rest of the night -- out of all the things to do in the Galapagos Islands -- I watched Cradle 2 The Grave with them on DVD as a slight drizzle came from above, like water out of a spray bottle set on "MIST."

God Vs. Darwin

DAY 29: Andre and I were lounging out on the hotel terrace, watching the sun rise over the bay as the sounds of ocean waves crashing into rocks filled the salty sea air. Nearby, three seals were lazily sitting in someone's boat.

We spent early morning watching the wildlife indigenous to the harbor area. Pelicans glided just above the surface of the water while other birds would dive straight into the water like kamikaze pilots in search of fresh fish. Seals swam underwater while above, the sun broke through the layer of clouds, revealing Isla San Cristobal in the distance. It was an incredible and beautiful way to start the day.

"Most people who believe in Natural Selection probably come here and say that God doesn't exist," Andre said. "But I come here and look at all this, and say that God does exist."

TO WRITE ABOUT THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS -- of where Charles Darwin's visit in 1835 led to the widely-accepted Theory of Evolution -- and discuss matters of Natural Selection would be cliché. So it was just my luck that my new roommate in the Galapagos was the first person I've met in all my 29 years that actually didn't believe in Darwin's theory. It was interesting to be exposed to the other side of the debate.

"I do believe that there is some sort of 'evolution,'" Andre said. "But I just call it progress. But you can't just say this came from this."

"Sure," I said to entertain his argument. "If Man evolved from monkeys, then how come we still have Man and monkeys today?" (And more importantly, why were both species paired up together so often in movies of the 1970s?)

It was like the Scopes trial (the famous American trial over whether or not evolution should be taught in a deeply religious community in the South) and with an open-mind I entertained the ideas of the religious rite even though I grew up with an American public education and have always accepted the Theory of Evolution. Most things in science class you do unless they explode in your face in chemistry.

On an episode of Friends, Phoebe once said to Ross that Darwin's theory was just a theory -- which got Ross all upset with his nasally voice. I think she said something to the effect of "How can you base science on what a couple of old guys made up hundreds of years ago?" True, not everything conjured up in 1835 was a good idea -- i.e. slavery -- and theories can be widely accepted or disproved. For example, how many of you were raised with the theory that dinosaurs were related to reptiles...until recent years, when people started saying they were related to birds instead? (Even New York City's American Museum of Natural History had to change the position of its big T-Rex skeleton to conform to the newer acception of theory.)

I'm not writing this to prove or disprove the existance of anything -- theory, deity or otherwise -- although I will point out that the Timeline of the Universe exhibit in the American Museum of Natural History states that at the time the explosion of multi-celled organisms started to appear on earth, "scientists still do not know the cause of this." I just think it's interesting to see the other side of the coin; Food for Free Thought if you will. I could write up arguments in the case for Darwin, but most of you already learned that in school, and as the case may be, I'm just about done taking my dump. (Yes, these are the deep thoughts I've been writing on my notepad while on the throne.) If you felt this was boring, perhaps a picture of the turds I just made will liven you up.

"ALL SET?" I asked Andre as we were about to head out the door for the day.

"Yup. First, a quick prayer." He knelt down at his bed and prayed to God for about fifteen seconds.

We met up with Navid and then bumped into Chris at random, and the four of us went searching for a last-minute boat tour that would hopefully accommodate all of us. The Lonely Planet book said that in the low season, tour agencies would be desperate for business and would "chase you down as you alight from the bus."

This was another Lonely Planet theory that was soon disproven.

Office after office, we'd get offers on any of about a dozen different ships of different comfort classes, but they were never any of them with four spaces free. The more and more offices we investigated, the more we realized the different agents were dealing with the same boat captains and we were just getting redundant information. It was still a lot of number crunching -- too much for us to process all at once -- so we discussed all our options over lunch. We already knew all the agencies by nicknames: The German Woman (aka, The Woman with the Hairy Arms), the Cemetary Girl, the First Guy (aka The Guy with the White Shirt aka The White Guy) and The Boys. To make a long story short, it was inevitable that we had to split up with all our different schedules. Chris got a four-day tour leaving the next day with The Boys. Andre got an seven-day from the First Guy leaving the next day, on a ship that would stop in Puerto Ayora for a passenger swap and supply pick-up. Navid and I got a six-day from The Boys on the same boat as Andre. Our mutual times on the ship would overlap for three days, which was good -- all three of us were divers and could dive the southern coral reefs together.

Since the four of us would be split up, we had one final dinner together at a restaurant starved for business. The woman there made us some nice double-shot cuba libres.

I WAS SITTING IN THE BAR ON THE CORNER, sitting across from Gustavo the local bartender again. We were watching a home video that his friend took at the very same bar a month ago when it was a lot more lively with a lot more people in town. Through a cover of darkness -- and Sony's handy nightvision feature -- te cameraman zoomed in on hot chicks and their asses.

"Donde son las chicas ahora?" ("Where are the girls now?") I asked him.

"En sus paises," ("In their countries,") he answered. "Tu hablas Español?" He was pretty shocked when I started conversing with him in Spanish the day before -- which surprised me because I thought I was blending in pretty well.

"Piensé tu es chino." ("I thought you were Chinese.")

I took off my glasses. "Y ahora?" ("And now?")

"Chino."

Perhaps Darwin's theory was right after all: I've evolved from a South American to a Chinese Guy.

Special thanks to Emile Courreges for donating to The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive! E-mail me your snail mail address and I'll send you a postcard!

Alone in the Dark without Jesus

DAY 30: Andre was up by six to get the 7:15 shuttle bus & ferry back to Isla Baltra (where the airport is), to hop on his boat from there. I assumed he got on the same bus as Chris as I stayed in bed for another hour.

After breakfast, Navid and I walked down the road to the Charles Darwin Station, the headquarters for most of the research of the Galapagos Islands. There we saw an exhibit of the conservation efforts, including a video presentation with dramatic reality-tv-news-type music to "scare" people into donating. And I thought the mandatory $100 entry fee to the islands they took from me as soon as I touched down at the airport was enough.

The Darwin Station compound harbors an impressive turtle sanctuary, with turtles of all ages: toddlers, disgruntled teens, adults that are sloppy eaters, and old-timers. A walking trail allowed us to walk near them, and the closer we got the more they would hide in their shells -- except for this one turtle that wouldn't stop yawning. Perhaps he was bored since we weren't turtle-y enough for the turtle club.

NAVID AND I RENTED BIKES in the afternoon to ride the 9km up the road to the underground lava-formed tunnels mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. Nine kilometers isn't a lot on a bike, but it seems a lot longer when it's all up a slight incline and the bike store guy gives you a bike with sketchy gear shifting. Navid was struggling and huffing and puffing, but I always tried to wait up for him. At a certain point, Navid just said, "Just go ahead, I'll catch up with you."

I cycled up the road to the small village of Bellavista, an island community untouched by the big tour groups. I waited at the intersection so Navid would know where to turn left. At a nearby bodega, I got two Gatorades -- one for me, one to wait for Navid after his struggle up the hill. I sat on the sidewalk and watched Galapagosian life go by. There wasn't much hustle about it; kids met up to play soccer, store owners leaned out their windows to people watch. I drank my drink slowly, waiting for Navid and then bought some crackers and waited some more. After about half an hour, I just caved in and drank Navid's Gatorade.

I rode back down the road to the bend to see if he was coming, and with no trace of him, I assume he went back. I followed his words to just go ahead and just went to the lava tubes myself.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE LAVA TUBES was on the outskirts of town, behind a shabby and deserted-looking wooden house. The sign outside read, "Los Tuneles del Amor" ("The Tunnels of Love") and it looked like a roadside tourist trap you'd see on a roadtrip of the U.S.A. I rang the cowbell at the gate and was greeted by a middle-aged man who let me sit with him on the front porch for a chat while I waited one last time for Navid to catch up.

The man's name was Jesus -- pronounced Hey Zeus -- and he had been living in the house by himself to run the business while his family lived back on the mainland in Machala. I managed to converse with him in Spanish because he was really laid back -- which meant he spoke very slooowllly. For the sake of brevity, let me translate part of it:

"[I'm waiting for my friend, but if he doesn't come, can I go alone?]" I asked.

"[No, it's not safe. You should have a friend with you. It's dark,]" he said. I didn't know if he was trying to prevent me from going solo or building up suspense. He was hard to read; he wasn't pushing like a salesman at all; he had the nonchalance of the Pepperidge Farm guy, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch. I was hoping he'd offer me some Milano cookies.

We sat in our chairs and talked while waiting another twenty minutes. He seemed like to be happy to have any sort of company since no one was around.

"[I think my friend returned to Puerto Ayora,]" I said, finally giving up on Navid. "[Can I go, just me?]"

"[Yes, if you don't think you will be scared.]"

"[Maybe I can go with you?]"

"[I have to be here in case people come.]"

I strapped on my headlamp and paid my two dollar admission. Jesus led me down a path to the back where the tunnel started. It looked like an underground bat cave or something -- I don't mean that in the millionaire playboy-turned-crime fighter kind of way. Once at the start of the tunnel, I looked ahead and saw nothing. It was so pitch black that my camcorder's night vision didn't even pick up anything unless I shined a little light on an upcoming rock (picture above).

I stumbled alone through the two story-high, one-mile long tunnel with my headlamp and night vision-enabled camcorder, wondering what was coming up or what was behind me or will anyone notice that I just farted? The childhood fear of the dark that I've overcome and surpressed as an adult suddenly came back, as I knew that I was somewhere under the ground on a volcanic island with half a mile of darkness in both directions. With my lamp, visibility was only about 20 feet, and I managed to I climb over some rocks while trying not to slip off of other wet ones. I was on the look out for skeletons or other things they might have put in the tunnel to scare the tourists, but there was nothing. I even entertained the thought that I'd find two lovers making out or having sex since it was the "Tunnel of Love" after all, but nothing.

After about forty minutes wandering alone through the dark nothingness, I found the light at the end of the tunnel and walked back to Jesus. Navid never showed up.

BACK IN PUERTO AYORA, I went looking for Navid but couldn't find him. I assumed he was fine since the bike store guy said he returned the bike hours before. Hungry, I went to a local family restaurant for some arroz con pulpo as two local girls were playing a pretty lame version of hide and seek. (They would just hide under a nearby table or around the corner all the time.) However, it was fun to help them cheat by telling the girl that was "it" where the other girl was.

I finally bumped into Navid, who told me that he had given up on the bikes and the lava tubes to take a nap. We went to a cafe with a collection of books to browse through, including Charles Darwin's famous The Origin of Species, of which the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection was introduced. I tried to get into it -- hoping to get an answer of what exactly happened on these islands that ultimately led to the hundreds of cars in America with Darwin "fish with legs" bumper stickers on them -- but it was long and old and sort of boring.

"Look at this book," Navid said, bringing over a children's book complete with pictures. "I think this one is a lot better." It was just at my reading level.

I read the entire book -- and looked at all the pictures! -- which summarized Darwin's whole process that led up to his famous theory. (i.e. "Turtles on this island have longer necks since they have to reach higher for food! They must have evolved that way out of necessity!" etc.) One interesting thing that I learned from the children's book is that Charles Darwin -- the revolutionary of modern biology and the poster child of atheists everywhere -- created his famous theory that species evolved over long periods of time, based on a trip to the Galapagos that only lasted a short period of five days. (Something to ponder...)

When I eventually leave the Galapagos, I will have been here for two weeks -- more than twice than Darwin's stay here. Perhaps I can come up with some of my own theories by then, which will lead to other bumper stickers in the future. For now, all I know is, when you're stuck underground, alone in the dark in a lava tube, farts sure do echo.

Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

DAY 31: When Andre moved out of our hotel room with a view of Pelican Bay, I was switched to a single which cost me $15/night. However, this newer, more expensive room wasn't worth its view of a brick wall, so I switched to the hostel Chris had lived in for only $6/night with windows that looked out to some palm trees.

Navid left to go on a three-day tour of Isla Isabela -- I didn't feel like spending the extra money and just wanted to rest -- so I just chilled out in Puerto Ayora for the day to observe island life and run errands. I had lunch at a grilled cheese stand near the grammar school where little kids in uniform came in and out for a quick juice or snack.

"[YOU ARE JAPANESE and you speak Spanish?]" a store owner asked me after I spoke some of his native tongue.

"[I look Japanese?]"

"Sí."

"[Where are you from?]"

"Nueva York."

"[And you speak Spanish?]"

"[A little.]"

"[It's good that you know enough.]"

I've now evolved from Latino to Chinese to Japanese. If only Darwin was around to observe this.

I WAS IN DESPERATE NEED OF A HAIRCUT, so I went to the local barber. It was an old-fashioned barber shop, complete with random old guys who just hang out and sleep in the store. The old sleeping guy at this particular place just sat in a chair with his head leaned back, mouth wide open, but woke up every 45 seconds or so to see what was going on. It was always the same old thing -- someone getting a haircut -- so he'd go take another 45 second nap.

I thought explaining what kind of cut I wanted would be difficult, but it was fairly easy when the barber just asked me what number attachment to use on his electric clippers for the sides and top. Anyone who grew up on Sesame Street could at least do that (and understand the reference in the title of this entry). He gave me a decent haircut, complete with a shave around the edges with an old-fashioned razor for four bucks.

After my haircut, the sleepy old man was sitting on the stoop with his cap on his head and eight teeth in his mouth, just looking out to the street. I stopped for a bit to hear his philosophies on life. I didn't understand all of it, but most of the time he just said the word "tranquilo" (peaceful) over and over, almost as if it was his answer for any question -- similar to the way I just say "sí" all the time. I could have probably asked him for the time and he would have just said, "Tranquilo."

"Adios," I bid him goodbye.

"Tranquilo, tranquilo."

THE STREETS OF TOWN WERE EMPTY and I wondered where everyone had gone. Then a dog with a Ecuador soccer jersey walked by and I realized where everyone was. I went to Limon & Cafe, Gustavo's bar to watch the big soccer game against Peru.

"[Who do you root for, Ecuador or Peru?]" one of the other bartenders asked me.

"Ecuador," I said, like it was even silly to ask such a question in Ecuador. "[And you?]"

"Ecuador!"

He pulled out a flag and set it up near the bar. When the game started, lots of people came into watch on two different televisions. There were two crazy guys in the bar that ran around like madmen -- regardless of Ecuador never scoring -- waving the flag in the streets while blowing a whistle. But in the end, it was a draw 0-0, and I still didn't get to see a big victory street party.

THE REST OF THE DAY I JUST WALKED AROUND. I bought some postcards and seasickness pills and looked for the cheapest price for a disposable underwater camera -- the cheapest being at a store where the storekeeper was playing Grand Theft Auto III on a computer in the back.

Back at my hostel, I met Joanna and Urban from Sweden, and Steve and Gwen from Scotland, who were just sitting around the common area. Both couples were in their later months of year-long travels. They invited me to a barbecue they were going to have downstairs, where I helped them grill the fish they caught in the day. I chipped in for some sugar cane rum.

We were joined by a Dutch couple who sprung for wine and bread and soon enough we were having an impromptu barbecue party under the night sky, only two hours after my introduction. A cat walked in with the smell of fish in the air and we gave him a bowl of scraps. Steve played tunes on a guitar he bought in Bolivia.

"My friends back home who cling onto their lives there always say that they'll have time to travel later in life, when the kids are all grown up," Steve said. "But I say that right here, right now, it is our time."

"I'll toast to that," I said. We all raised our glasses.

THE REST OF THE NIGHT was spent playing a Bolivian drinking game, which involved rules from both rolling dice and playing Jenga, if you can imagine that. Needless to say I got pretty trashed. Steve was drunk enough to catch a gecko on the wall and put it in his mouth for a couple of seconds before it scurried away for its life. For a short while we went to Gustavo's bar where it was just all local guys hitting on all the gringo women. I was pretty out of it and just went back to the hostel.

Hungover, I struggled the next morning writing this blog entry in my room thinking that at least I have a view of palm trees instead of bricks.

A Day at the Beach

DAY 32: Three kilometers west of Puerto Ayora lies Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay), with a white sand beach open to the public. During the high season, I can imagine it being crowded with beachgoers and surfers, but it being the lowest of the low season, I had it all to myself.

A twenty-minute hike along a winding brick path brought me to Turtle Bay, where the surf was big and the waters turquoise. Despite its name, there was no evidence of turtles there, other than one dug-up hole I found where I thought one may have laid eggs since I saw remnants of a turtle egg shell nearby.

It was an overcast day and a bit breezy, but tranquilo. I took my boots off and walked down the shore as the relaxing white noise of ocean waves filled the air. During my stroll, I realized I wasn't alone; marine life was all around me. Orange-footed birds landed near the rocks, where thousands of dark crabs crawled through the crevices. Red crabs searched for food along the sand before crawling back into their perfect holes in the sand. Pelicans soared above the water, searching for a mid-day snack.

Perhaps it was because I was in the national park zone -- where animals aren't threatened by humans -- that I was able to get fairly close to them. The little finches were particularly curious, always approaching me. One of them even stood guard of my bag when I put it down for a bit to take some photos.

I sat for a while and just enjoyed the serenity of it all with my box of Ritz crackers and cheese. I noticed that someone had dropped two seasickness pills and I cleared it off the beach before any of the birds accidentally ingested it, thinking that it may destroy the balance of nature or something. This helped me clear my conscience from the time I was in Antarctica in 2002 and accidentally left two Advil tablets on land -- available to any wandering penguin -- when I used them to form eyeballs for a snowman I made with my friend Sam. I can only hope the Advil only alleviated headaches -- or hangovers -- for two lucky penguins and nothing more.

BEYOND THE MANGROVE TREES lay a walking path through an area of cactus trees between the ocean and a lagoon. The trail was loaded with marine iguanas, either blending in the rocks, letting the ocean waves splash around them, or lounging in the sand. The further I went along the trail, the more and more iguanas I'd see, a lot of them blocking the path so that I couldn't get by as if they were purposely trying to prevent me from going farther. At one point, an iguana actually moved to form a picket line of iguanas across the path, but I just strayed off the path for a bit to go around them. As I trekked further I thought they were trying to protect a treasure or nest or something, but perhaps they were all henchman of the big old fat iguana, who just lay in the path like a mob boss. Inside of giving him an offer he couldn't refuse, I just walked around him.

The path went in a big circle and led me back to the beach, where I just put my hat over my eyes and took a nap for half an hour.

WHEN I WOKE UP, there were a few more people on the beach, some walking back and forth, some sunbathing, some surfing in the water. I walked to the other side of the bay, where the surf crashed into rocks, and ran into my friends from the night before. They were fishing off the shore with just spools of fishing line and hooks in hopes of catching another supply for another barbecue.

Gwen let me use her fishing line for a while in hopes that I would be more lucky than she was. She baited my hook with a piece of eel that they had caught earlier, and I flung my hook, line and sinker into the water. I stood on the rocks, trying not to slip on the wet ones, as hundreds of dark crabs crawled all around me.

"Is today Thursday?" Gwen asked me.

I didn't know the answer until I looked at my watch. "Yeah, Thursday. I probably wouldn't care unless I didn't have a tour on Saturday."

When you spend days just surfing and fishing and nothing else, I suppose that what day it is doesn't matter at all. It's a great feeling.

A PELICAN SWOOPED IN and landed near us, possibly trying to snag our bait. I continued to wait for a bite, but it was hard to distinguish a nibble from the motion of the waves and I kept on pulling up nothing. After a couple of tries, I felt that my hook had been snagged on an underwater rock and after numerous attempts and trying to pull it loose, the only thing to do was go in and retrieve it. I took of my shorts and had my trunks underneath and tried to get it without getting too wet, but the tide was coming in and the waves pushed me out farther and deeper than I wanted. I managed to get the unsnag the hook from under a rock, but not without getting my boots and shirt completely soaked.

Gwen had a go at fishing again, as a marine iguana looked on. She still had no luck, but then Steve came from surfing, cast a line and caught a grouper in about three minutes. Meanwhile on the other side of the rocks, Mike and Sonya (the Dutch couple from the night before) were still struggling for a bite. Mike pulled out his line and got nothing -- not even his hook and sinker.

"I guess it's time to go," he said.

We walked back over the rocks and to the beach. Along the way, Steve would run towards an iguana and catch it by its tail like the Crocodile Hunter, and then pick it up and tickle its belly. Afterwards, the lizard would run away for dear life -- possibly on the lookout for accidental motion sickness pills.

"They probably get sick of all the tourists doing that all the time," Steve said.

WE WALKED BACK THE THREE KILOMETERS into town along the winding brick road, making room for the occasional jogger who was running back and forth. I strayed in the back with Sonya and chatted about travel and New York after Nine Eleven. She was impressed with the fact that I had the capacity to travel alone.

"I don't think that I would be able to travel alone, I'd get too lonely," she said. "But I think it's good because you find things about yourself."

"I haven't found anything about myself yet." I could have told her that one thing I found was that I really don't have any qualms about taking pictures of poo, but I kept that to myself.

WITHOUT ENOUGH FISH FOR ANOTHER COOKOUT, we just went to a ceviche restaurant and bought bowls of lime-marinaded fish instead.

Idiot on Wheels

DAY 33: Rosa, the old woman that ran the Los Amigos hostel, let me use the big sink in the yard to do my laundry. We chatted for a bit while I scrubbed my underwear, about this and that in Puerto Ayora. She seemed happy to talk to one of the travelers; most of them just kept to themselves and lived in a bubble, never interacting with their hosts unless they needed something.

I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA to rent a bike and see life in the other smaller villages of Isla Santa Cruz -- particularly Santa Rosa, 19km away -- instead of just staying in Tourist Town the whole time. I went to the store of the guy who thought I was Japanese, who also rented bikes. I don't think he recognized me -- perhaps it was my new lesbianesque haircut or my lack of glasses -- because he asked me where I was from again.

"New York."

"Alaska?"

"New York."

"Alaska? Texas?"

I didn't know where he was going with this other than to show off his knowledge of the fifty states. Or perhaps he thought I was Inuit- or Mexican-looking. At any rate, he rented me a bike for $6 all day, which was really good considering the place Lonely Planet suggested was for $22/day.

I rode up the 7 km inclined road back to the small village of Bellavista (where the "Tunnel of Love" lava tubes are), thinking how great it is to see things via bicycle. When you're in a car or a bus, everything is behind the barrier of glass and just zooms on by. If I weren't on a bike, I might not have seen the turtle on the side of the road, munching on some leaves, or gotten close to the mule that was grazing, I thought.

In Bellavista, I stocked up on Gatorade and crackers and sat on the curb again. Nearby, two kids were playing with their bicycles until I truck drove by and dropped off their father. The little boy dropped his bike and ran across the street yelling "Papi! Papi! Papi!" I never saw a kid so excited to see his dad.

I head east for the remaining 12km to Santa Rosa, through farmlands, pastures and orchards. I rode passed stray dogs, cows and goats, which I had learned had eradicated some of the endemic species of the islands with their introduction. But really, how else were we to get milk for our coffee and steaks for our dinners?

I thought the ride would be a breeze since I'm use to day-long bike rides at home, but the incline was tough. I thought that biking between towns was a common thing amongst the islanders since almost everyone in Puerto Ayora got around by bike, but no one but me was on a bicycle. Most people just drove by in the comfort of a car or a bus, or in the back of a pick-up truck, with a look in their eyes that read, "You idiot." I'm sure some of them were pointing and taunting "Ha ha," the way Nelson Munz does on The Simpsons.

Lonely Planet might have been wrong about somethings, but I should have listened to them this time; they implied that biking should not be done because it's all uphill. I cursed myself on every turn of the pedal, scolding myself for setting yet another difficult goal instead of just fishing on the beach with the Scots and Scandanavians again. But I grit my teeth and pressed on -- a lot of times just getting off the bike and walking it uphill -- with the one thought in my mind: On the way back, it's all downhill.

AFTER ABOUT THREE HOURS, I finally came to a guard post run by the national park bureau and spoke to the guy there.

"[Where is Bella Rosa?]" I asked.

"Bellarosa?"

"Sí, Bella Rosa."

"[Bella Rosa? Oh, Santa Rosa,]" he corrected me. "[It's right over there.]" He pointed down the road.

I rode down the block and sure enough, there it was, the village of Santa Rosa. A natural endorphin rush flowed through my body in accomplishment. I never felt so happy to see -- what I later discovered -- a town that had absolutely nothing to do or see. It was just a sleepy little village without even a corner store or anyone around to talk to.

I turned around and rode the 19 km back -- this time downhill -- stopping for a short while back in Bellavista to watch a local junior soccer game. Once back in Puerto Ayora, I was completely drained of fluids, and just went for food and beers with Chris who had arrived back in town after his four-day boat tour. The cerveza flowed through my body and I got a pretty quick buzz.

IT STARTED POURING in town, so I returned my bike and went back to Limon & Cafe, Gustavo's popular bar. Gustavo wasn't there, but Jorge, another bartender I had met before was tending. He bought a round of shots for me and the two Swiss girls I met there, Esther and some name I can't pronounce that starts with an "F." I thought that maybe the two Swiss girls would be cool to hang out with, but they left to get on a 8-day boat tour.

"Chicas," Jorge said sympathetically with his surf apparel and short blue-dyed hair.

Later on that night, the bar was alive and kicking with a Friday night crowd of newly disembarked tour passengers and locals. Andre was in town for his one day stopover on the island, where his boat would drop off some passengers and pick up some new ones, including me and Navid. He introduced me to two girls he had met on the ship, an English brunette who had been traveling for months with a lot more months to go, and a Canadian blonde who only had four more days in her trip left.

The MP3 DJ "spun" house, salsa and reggae and we danced amongst the locals. Everyone came in unison when a medley of Bob Marley songs came on, singing "One Love" together.

Afterwards, Andre took a water taxi back to his room on the ship, while me and the girls went looking for an after-hours snack place. Despite it being a weekend with bars open til the wee hours, there was nothing open. The Canadian girl was staying at my hostel so we met up in the common room to improvise with my pack of crackers and her peanut butter and jelly. We talked the early morning over makeshift but satisfying sandwiches.

The next morning, she left for an early flight back to the mainland, while I geared up for my six-day cruise.

I am leaving for my six-day cruise this evening, so thus begins the N.I.Z. (No Internet Zone)! Hope you enjoyed the first 33 days; it's been my pleasure. I hope to return next week with lots of pictures and stories of scuba diving and land trekking around the isles of the Galapagos! (Perhaps even, there will be a picture of my puke should I get seasick.)

To the American readers, Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be slicing up a nice big tuna instead of a turkey this year. I suppose that makes it "Happy Tuna Day."

Ships Ahoy, But Not The Beer

DAY 34: To kill time before my 8:00 pm boat tour departure, I went back to Turtle Bay to chill out and read. On my way down the winding path, I ran into Chris who was on his way back to town. I chatted with the 63-year-old South African from Toronto until that uncomfortable silent lull you inevitably get when you bump into an acquaitance on the street and there is no good gossip to talk about. Your options usually are to A) Talk about the nice or shitty weather; B) Scratch your ass; C) A followed by B; or what I did, D) Say, "Well, I'll be seeing you."

He left for his flight back to the mainland later that day and I never saw him again.

NAVID, FRESH OFF THE BOAT from his little excursion to the big island of Isabela, checked into my Los Amigos hostel to sleep in all day. He let me keep my bags there while I ran errands in town all day.

In the evening, on our way out of the hostel, we ran into the Scots and Scandinavians, who were cutting up onions and making a marinade for another barbecue of the day's catch.

"Have a good tour then," Steve the Scotsman said. "Make sure you bring your own drinks though; the beer is quite expensive."

Hearing this, Navid and I went down to the supermarket by the harbor to stock up on supplies. I got a bottle of sugar cane rum, bottles of Coke and boxes of juice. Navid was trying to get some cold beers, but they were all sold out. The woman there directed us to another place down the street.

We left our bags with two of our soon-to-be-shipmates, a German couple near the travel agency, and went looking for a beer store. Time was running out and we couldn't find a place and before we knew it the group was ready to board the ship. We had no choice but to do what many college students would think is inconceivable -- go an entire six days without cheap beer.

AT THE DOCK, we noticed a fellow tourist who was more prepared than we were; he had with him a whole case of twelve big bottles of beer, all neatly packed in a sturdy plastic milk crate. His beer supply outweighed his luggage.

"Thought I'd come prepared. I heard the beers are three dollars on the ship," he said. In Ecuador, where dollar values are about 1/5 of what things are in the U.S.A., this translated to about $15/beer, and the small size too -- which is yet another inconceivable thing for the college student.

The smart beer guy's name was James, a New Zealander who had lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, just about a mile away from my old neighborhood in Metro New York City. He had quit his corporate job in Morristown, New Jersey of two years to travel Easy Rider-style. With his Japanese motorcycle, he had been on the road for fifteen months thus far, starting from his former residence in Hoboken to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southern most city in the world at the very tip of South America. He had spent his first six months or so going south, and the rest heading back up north. He left his bike at a mechanic in Quito for a couple of weeks and decided to kill time with a little Galapagos excursion before riding again for another year or two.

THE WATER TAXI picked us up to take us to our ship, but some woman who I think was the harbormaster told James that he wasn't allowed to bring the beers like that and took it away from him. Navid justifiably called her the "Nazi Woman."

"I knew I should have hidden it in a bag," James said.

We rode away under the night sky and the crate of beer got smaller and smaller. James had a look on his face like, well, like a guy who had just had lots of beer confiscated from him. (This is a similiar look one gives when one hears that he or she must undergo root canal surgery.)

"Now I'm glad we couldn't find beers," Navid told me.

THE Y/V FREE ENTERPRISE WAS ANCHORED not too far from the main dock. It was a good sized ship, a former sailing schooner that had traded its sails for a big motor to tour around twenty tourists and a small crew. We boarded the ship in time for a briefing by our tour leader Mauricio. Navid and I were reunited with Andre, who had done the first half of the trip already.

We also met our new shipmates including Sonya, an artist/waitress/bartender from Massachusetts and her South African chef boyfriend Sean. I made friends with Manuel, the sole bartender/waiter on the ship, who was dressed up in a bowtie like Isaac from The Love Boat. He wasn't sure if I spoke Spanish or if I was Cambodian. He was happy when I busted out some Spanish words, and used Spanish and body language to point out Birgit, the attractive Danish blonde that he had his eye on.

See Crabs and Sea Lions

DAY 35: The Galapagos Islands attracts many kinds of visitors, from retired American couples and their funny-looking beach hats and Bermuda shorts, to scuba divers and their funny-looking everything if they ever walked out on the streets with all their gear on. I put all this gear on for my first dive at 5:45 in the morning off the coast of Isla Rabida.

With me was James, Sylvain, a Spanish-fluent rastafarian from France, and his Guatemalan girlfriend Carolina. We were led by our resident divemaster Ty, an Israeli diver who was always seen wearing either one of two outfits: his wetsuit, or the same tie-dye shirt and cut off jean shorts. With his curly hair and sunglasses, he looked like he was perpetually at a Grateful Dead concert; Andre described him as the one guy that appeared as if you could ask him to take you diving and score drugs from at the same time.

A dingy took us to a drop point and immediately as we submerged, a curious sea lion swam around us. Shortly thereafter, we were greeted by lots of tropical fish and swam amongst them with our flippers on our feet and our dorsal air tanks. Near the bottom of the ocean floor, it suddenly took a lot more energy to stay in one place; we had entered a relatively strong current and had to hang onto lava rocks to stay put or advance. It was a morning exercise routine that put pilates to shame.

"How was it?" Navid asked when I got back onto the ship.

"Great; I don't even think I need coffee this morning."

AFTER BREAKFAST, WE DID A LAND EXCURSION on Isla Rabida in two groups. Mauricio led my group along the designated trail -- the only allowable place to wander in the national park. At a nearby lagoon, we got our first glimpse of the famous Galapagos wildlife, a lone flamingo fishing for food, marine iguanas and sea lions (and their turds). Mauricio lectured about the endemic cactus trees and the endemic finch birds. It seemed he liked to use the word "endemic" a lot.

"That's a baby camera," he said when he noticed my little Sony DSC-U30.

"Yes, it's endemic to Japan."

ON THE BEACH, baby sea lion pups were squirming around and wobbling along with their tiny newborn bodies. I believe the most scientific way to describe them is "Aw so darn cute!" Seriously, I don't think anyone could come here and not want to bring one home. My group went ahead, but I was fixated on just watching the pups come in and out of the water.

"I could just watch this all day," I told Sonya, who was trailing behind as well, enamored by their cuteness too.

AFTER LUNCH, our ship had arrived at another island, Isla Santiago, where we did another land excursion. I was in a group led by the other guide, Tatjiana, a 24-year-old Ecuadorean naturalist who lived with her aunt in Puerto Ayora. She led us along the tidal pools in the lava rock, hardened in a state that looked like someone had spilled a bottle of Magic Shell chocolate topping. Mother sea lions reared their young as bright red "sally lightfoot" crabs contrasted their bodies against the dark rocks. The crabs Tatjiana explained, were named after a scientist's wife Sally who was so bored of the Galapagos during a visit of her husband that she left after two days. How being bored and leaving after two days translates to "lightfoot" I'm not sure, but maybe she never saw how cute a sea lion pup could get.

We walked down the shore of tidal pools above underground water tunnels that spit up like geysers with the coming tide. The ocean mist cooled the bodies of the many marine iguanas that stood around in groups and just stared at the sun like kids in front of a TV.

After some snorkeling, we watched a soccer game that was in progress at a makeshift arena on the island that ships' crews made to keep from getting bored when waiting around for tourists. Perhaps Sally should have done the same; then maybe we'd have sally soccer crabs.

BACK ON BOARD, we passed the time watching a bootleg DVD of Underworld while Ty went underwater to dislodge our anchor that had been caught on some rocks. Navid and I had dinner with our rum and Cokes with two Swedish brothers who were traveling with their mother.

We had our official opening toast after dinner where everyone had to introduce him or herself in Spanish, except for the crew who had to do it in English. Afterwards, I stood out on the main deck watching the stars. The sky was incredibly clear and I saw stars in places I didn't even think stars existed. Meanwhile, the others were watching Hollywood stars -- namedly Martin Lawrence and Paul Giamatti -- in a bootleg DVD of Big Momma's House.

The War With Portugal

DAY 36: I was up on deck at sunrise before the others. Manuel was there doing morning chores and I rapped with him for a bit. We exchanged English and Spanish words until he saw something off the starboard side.

"Mira, hay tortugas que haciendo sexo." ("Look, there are turtles having sex.")

And thus began my second day on a boat trip of the Galapagos. (Others started by jumping off the side of the boat for a morning swim.)

"HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO THE MOON?" Mauricio opened in a briefing, probably for the hundredth time to yet another tour group. It was his way of introducing us to Bartolome, a small volcanic island off the shore of Isla Santiago, known for its "moonscape" of craters and jagged rock formations. Tatjiana said that one of these kind of rock formations are so sharp that they are known as "Ah Ah" rocks because that's the sound you make when you walk on them barefoot.

Bartolome is easily recognizable by its monumental Pinnacle Rock, a massive pointy rock that juts out of the bay. A short hike up a mountain through the moonscape brought us up to a lookout point of Pinnacle Rock, which also overlooked out to a narrow piece of land in between two beautiful bays (picture above). Along the way we also saw the endemic lava cacti, plants that have somehow managed to root themselves in lava rocks which look like dildos with prickly spines on them. (Girls, don't try this at home.) We also saw the endemic lava lizard, which is the only lizard in the world that can regenerate its tail should it be bitten off by a Galapagos hawk or other predator.

TWENTY MINUTES AWAY BY BOAT lies Cousins Rock, which looks like a huge bird dropping floating in the ocean. Almost completely white from bird poo, it is the resting place -- and bathroom -- of many sea birds. Rather than walk around in the shit, we went underwater and snorkerled around the big turd. Sea lions also convene here and it was fun chasing them and finding them hiding in nooks in the submerged rock wall -- that is, until I felt this incredible and excrusiating pain on my right wrist. A blue bottle jellyfish -- otherwise known as a Portuguese Man of War (which is weird because they don't look like men or speak Portuguese) -- had wrapped its blue stinger tail around my wrist. After freaking out for a bit, I had stupidly managed to not only get the pain on my right wrist, but on my left arm and face. In retrospect, I thought perhaps it was trying to mate with the blue rubber band I had on there that was connected to my underwater camera.

The pain pulsed stronger and I felt it go up my arm. I waved down a dingy and the guy rushed me back to the ship, despite the fact that blue bottle stings aren't poisonous -- just painful and very annoying. A clear pattern of white lesions started swelling up around my wrist, and everyone recommended that I rub vinegar on it to alleviate the pain, so I went to the galley and asked Victor the chef for some. He didn't have any, but cut me a slice of papaya and told me that it would be medicinal as well. I smeared the fruit all over my face and all over my hands and arms and made quite a mess of myself.

"I got stung by a jellyfish," I told Sonya who was sitting on deck.

"Oh, I just thought you were a slob."

Birgit the Dane also got stung on her shoulder so I gave her a piece of what was left of my papaya. The fruit only did so much, so I soaked some tissues in some sugar cane rum and used that. As painful as it was, it was a shame to waste good liquor on something like that, but luckily an Australian guy had some antiseptic. It felt a lot better -- to drink the liquor instead I mean.

ON OUR WAY BACK TO THE SHORES OF BARTOLOME, we found some penguins drying out on the rocks. They didn't hang around for long, so we landed near the mangroves and walked to the other bay to observe the sally lightfoot crabs, Galapagos hawks and sea turtles swimming near shore. Portuguese Men of War washed up on shore with their blue stinger tails stuck in the sand without a tide to take them back to sea.

"Oh, these are the guys!" Birgit exclaimed. A sally lightfoot found one of the blue bottles and grabbed it in its claws and took it away for dinner. "Good," Birgit said.

Score one for our team in the battle against the Portuguese Men of War.

DURING A SNORKEL, we swam around Pinnacle Rock through enormous schools of tropical fish and through underground tunnels (before running out of breath.) A sand dollar shell fell from above suddenly and a sea lion picked it up off the floor like a dog playing fetch and showed it to me.

As the sun set, Tatjiana stopped being a guide for a while and just sat on the beach with me. We chatted together about our lives and speculated on whether or not Keanu Reeves is gay (not that there's anything wrong with it) and it was a nice way to spend a sunset -- until the sun was really getting low and the dingys weren't coming to pick us up. Mauricio tried to whistle them down -- because carrying a two-way radio would just be silly -- but there was no movement from the boat about 1,000 feet away off shore.

"There's one way to get them," Andre said. He threw me his towel. "Bring my bag?" he asked me quicker than I could comprehend what was going on. Soon it was clear; he jumped in the ocean and swam the long way to the ship. We met him there ten minutes later -- and completely dry.

MANUEL WAS FOLDING NAPKINS into fans when we reboarded the ship. I sat with him for a bit and shared my mango juice and rum with him as he, by Spanish and the use of his index finger, told me how he has a real boner for blondes. Navid came by to join us and asked what was going on and Manuel just smiled and said, "Las chicas rubias!" ("Blonde chicks!") He was saddened when I told him that I found out that Birgit already had a fairly serious boyfriend that was going to meet her in Quito after her trip to the Galapagos.

I started getting pretty seasick with the rocking of the boat and popped a seasick pill. The problem with seasickness pills is that you have to take them before you get sick, which sucks when you're on the verge of vomitting. (I neglected to take it because I was fine for the first two days.) The only thing to do at this point is just go to sleep and hope you don't vomit on your cabinmate on the lower bunk.

(I didn't.)

The Dating Game

DAY 37: There was a knock on the door at 5:45 in the morning. It was Mauricio waking everyone up for an early sunrise pre-breakfast land excursion on North Seymour Island, land of frigate birds and blue-footed boobies, birds whose mere name makes little kids -- and this author -- snicker immaturely.

MALE FRIGATE BIRDS, known by some as "ballsack" birds, are black birds about a foot tall with a chest that looks like a big sloppy red scrotum. This "scrotum" inflates like a baloon to entice females flying above to swoop on in for a little lovin'.

We encountered a breeding ground of a dozen or so male frigate birds, sitting on branches, all looking above for the one lucky lady who would enjoy their "pleasure." Sometimes only one female would fly above, and almost in unison, all the males would go crazy like a group of construction workers when a woman walks by, inflate their big red scrotum-like chests and flap their wings while making "cat calls" that sound like tapping on hollow rubber tubes. One female came down to one male and checked him out, but then left him stag. Talk about playing hard to get. As an experiment, you guys out there should try inflating and waving around your scrotums in a bar and see if you can get any luckier.

BLUE-FOOTED BOOBIES (picture above), another popular bird in the Galapagos (mainly because of its name that -- hee hee -- makes me snicker yet again), has a different tactic in the dating game. At the sexual mature age of five, males develop a blue color in their webbed feet, which is used to flirt with women. They do this by doing a little dance where they show off their feet to prove that their ready to have sex, which is pretty amazing considering that when I was five, I was still trying to keep myself from wetting my pants in kindergarten.

As an experiement, you guys out there might want to try a similar tactic with a pair of blue shoes on a night on the town. Do a little dance and yell "Look at my feet!" over and over and see how far you get. Most likely you'll have to go to a foot fetish convention to get any results, after of which you should probably legally change your name and telephone number and never talk to those people again.

ALONG THE SHORE OF NORTH SEYMOUR ISLAND, newborn sea lion pups were breast feeding off their sea lion moms. We walked amongst them as they sucked away; one was going back and forth between two teets realy fast like he was trying to mix two different flavors in his mouth before swallowing. Nearby, we noticed a freshly born pup that was only about an hour old. Pelicans swooped in and ate the mother's placenta.

The experiments end there because this clearly should not be done in an attempt to pick up ladies.

WE BID GOODBYE TO ANDRE and an Australian couple who had finished their seven-day tour, and dropped them off at the airport on Isla Baltra. We awaited for their replacements while lounging on the beach.

Baltra was one a United States station in World War II, where atomic bombs were tested. Although the U.S. has gone -- other than the tourists -- Baltra's beach still holds a military base for the Ecuadorean military. There are still rumors of land mines in some areas.

With this said, there was only a small beach to tan in, which was good enough. I went snorkeling off the shore for a bit but didn't see much; perhaps the U.S. scared all the animals away in the area as well. H bombs have that sort of effect on things.

Sylvain the Spanish-speaking French rastafarian brought along a hyperkite, those kits with two strings that a notch above the cheap plastic kits you get a a five and dime. His pink sail soared in the air and he controlled the wind like a puppet master, doing spins and crazy turns.

"Want to try?" he asked me in his soft-spoken voice. I jumped at the opportunity and felt like a kid again, regardless of the fact that he didn't say the phrase "blue-footed boobies."

I took the handles and immediately the kite plummetted down into the sand like a brick. Carolina ran out to relaunch the kite into the air. In five seconds of my handling, it came crashing down again, this time almost hitting Carolina right in the head.

"Careful not to kill my girlfriend," Sylvain said.

I got the hang of it after a while -- it's more or less a balancing act. I even got to do a few spins. "You are a champion," Sylvain said in his peaceful voice.

James was amazed at the high-flying acrobatics and took the reins for a while. I ran around and relaunced his crashes.

FOUR NEW PEOPLE CAME ABOARD, including Maartin and Diana, a Dutch couple. They were so amazed with everything, and only with being in the islands for half an hour. Birgit and I briefed them on the deck with what they could expect to see, including warnings of Portuguese Men of War. Afterwards, I did a mid-day dive with Navid and an Australian couple. I managed to see a big sea turtle and white-tipped shark before running out of air.

ISLA MOSQUERA IS A SMALL ISLAND off the coast of North Seymour Island. Only about the size of a football field, it could probably fit inside Bill Gates' living room, and that includes the ocean as well. Isla Mosquera is more or less just a beach with ocean on both ends. It was the resting ground of sea lion colonies, complete with male "harbormasters" that looked over their prides and charged at any incoming male that would challenge him for all the ladies -- or photographers that tried to get an action photo for that matter.

Tatjiana and I took a leisurely stroll to the two sides of the island, avoiding the occasional harbormaster fight that would always end in one male running away like a loser. I saw many sea lions, pregnant ones, young ones feeding, and of course, the cute little pups. One particular young pup was lying in the sand, clinging onto life.

"This one is weak," Tatjiana said. "He's going to die."

It was a sad thought, but that was nature's way. Nature made up for it because we stumbled upon a newborn, perhaps just an hour old, still fresh with blood. The new pup was struggling to find one of his mother's four teets, and we tried to coach him yelling directions.

AFTERWARDS, TATJIANA AND I PLAYED CUARENTA on the ship until our nightly briefing. She started feeling a little sick after dinner and just went to bed. I watched a bootleg DVD of Die Another Day with the others until the tracking messed up before it was over, making it unwatchable. I think that maybe 007 won in the end and probably got the girl -- all without dancing with blue shoes or inflating his scrotum -- but like I said, the tracking was messed up so I can't be for sure if he did or not.

The Land of Land Iguanas

DAY 38: Manuel was tidying up the lounge area in the morning while I was waiting for the first diving group to return. He poured himself a drink and told me it was his wife's birthday back at home. "Salud," he said as he raised his glass.

"Salud!" I reciprocated. Funny, I had no idea he was married all that time.

"IT WAS AN AMAZING DIVE!" Sergei the Hamburger said. (He's from Hamburg, Germany, silly.) "Twelve hammerheads swam right by us, maybe just one meter away!"

"Do you take travelers' checks?" Sonya asked Ty, who wasn't intending on diving until she heard all the raves. She joined me, Sylvain and Carolina in the second group at Gordon Rocks.

GORDON ROCKS, THREE MASSIVE ROCKS in the middle of the ocean off the east coast of Isla Santa Cruz, is known as the place to dive in the Galapagos as it is at the crossroads of different currents of the Pacific with varying temperatures. Gordon Rocks has been known to have strong currents -- sometimes so much that inexperienced divers have cried after a dive -- but Ty said it was relatively calm with the first group.

Underwater, we swam around the rocks that reached deep down to the ocean floor. For a majority of the time, the water was relatively warm, until we entered this one small patch of extremely cold water, which strengthened my theory that most warm ocean water is just urine from those kids who pee during family beach trips -- I was one of them -- and we had just stumbled upon the one small patch of real ocean water.

A sea turtle swam near us as we scaled up a pile of volcanic rocks. I looked up and above us two hammerheads swam nearby with their eyes on the sides of their weirdly-shaped heads that would probably come in handy if a person with high hair ever sat in front of them at the movie theater. The hammerhead sighting was only temporary and not as awesome as the one the first group had, but it was a thrill nonetheless.

AFTER BREAKFAST, WE MADE A LANDING on South Plaza Island, the land of land iguanas (picture above), a different species than the marine iguanas that has been indigenous to this blog thus far. Land iguanas munched on cactus trees as we hiked around the designated trail to the rocky cliffs were swallow-tailed gulls made their nests in the ledges. Ocean waves crashed below caressed the rocks with turquoise and white foam.

Post-lunch snorkel time was off the rocky coast of Isla Santa Fe. A family of about five sea lions swam around me and played chicken. One by one, each would come straight towards me like a torpedo and then swerve at a 90 degree angle at the last minute to avoid collision. Tatjiana warned me from the dingy that I was getting too close to a male harbormaster, so I steered clear of sea lions after that.

I managed to find an eagle ray flying through the hydroscape, flapping its wings through the clear blue water, followed by a sea turtle. Animals just seem to pop up at convenient times in these parts. While I explored some of the rocks, I noticed a sea snake slithering between the crevices. When I told the others on board that I had seen one, they didn't believe me, saying that I had just seen an eel. But I pointed out a picture in Maartin's animal book -- I had found the one species of sea snake found in the entire archipelago, the very rare -- and very venomous -- yellow-bellied sea snake. It's a shame I didn't have a picture developed from my underwater camera to show them at the time. (I know it's hard to see; it's a digital photo of a developed photo of a blurry shot, but at least I'm still alive.)

"IF YOU TURN OVER THE ROCKS," Mauricio said during our land trek on Isla Santa Fe. "You might find a scorpion." As he continued to lecture about the Galapagos hawks, lava lizards, iguanas (and iguana corpses) and a new type of endemic cactus tree, I couldn't help but be curious and just turned over rocks in search of scorpions. Most of the time I found nothing -- they probably avoided the rocks on the tourist trail because of annoying curious people like myself -- but after twenty five tries I found a small one scurry away before I could grab my camera. After that I reverted my attention back to Mauricio.

"Smell the scent of these tree," he said. "They burn this like incense and it keeps mosquitos away." One by one we touched the sap and smelled the sweet mushroom/licorice scent.

"Be careful with this. You must wash your hands right away because it becomes infectious." We were far away from any sink or even the ocean and we all had looks on our face like a midget had suddenly appeared from behind a tree wearing a Speedo.

"Just kidding."

WHILE WE WAITED AT THE BEACH, there was a pride of sea lions lazily sleeping in the same like they always do. Really, the life of a sea lion must be awesome; they just sleep on the beach or go swimming all day in between meals and sucking on teets. Anyway, the male harbormaster of this pride was particular protective of his women like -- as Sonya and I describe in unison -- "a pimp protecting his bitches." The male chased anyone who tried to take a photo of them and we ran away in fear of sea lion bites. James managed to get a quick photo of me lying next to them before the male started charging me.

We must have been a real annoyance since the women started getting cranky too and made us flinch a couple of times. Luckily Manuel, who was not only a waiter and bartender but a sailor as well, came in a dingy before any unfortuante incidents.

SONYA BEAT ME IN TWO GAMES OF CHESS back on the ship -- she's half Russian and I'm just suck -- as we cruised to the southern island of Española through the night.

The Bird Slut

DAY 39: Each island of the Galapagos archipelago has its share of endemic species -- species that are not found anywhere else. Sometimes we'd be treated to a new animal, sometimes it was the same old marine iguana, sally lightfoot crab or the ever-popular sea lion (which never got tired.) This was the case when we landed on the shores of Gardner Bay on Isla Española, the southern most island of all the Galapagos and walked along its white sand beach. However, as Darwin discovered, Life finds a way to make things interesting.

"You should go for Tatjiana," Navid suggested to me as we walked along the beach. He had noticed that there might be some sort of attraction between the two of us. "Seems like she's interested."

"Yeah, I know," I answered. Yes, I felt too that perhaps there might be something there; then again, it could just have been the psychological syndrome I've heard of where tourists fall for their guides because of circumstance, sort of like Florence Nightingale Syndrome -- I noticed that the other guys traveling solo were trying to get her attention as well.

NEO AND AGENT SMITH DUKED IT OUT in a bootleg DVD of Matrix Revolutions, yet another addition to Mauricio's extensive underground DVD collection, as we cruised to Punta Suarez, the western point of Isla Española. When we were anchored and just waiting around, a huge school of fish began hovering near the boat while Tatjiana and I were talking on the port side deck. She was telling me about the slang term "colorado" that she and her friends use to describe the gringos, since they get "colored" red when burning in the sun, whereas moreno people like her and myself just got darker and darker.

The term "colorado" could apply to marine iguanas as well because we were greeted by red marine iguanas grouped up in piles. Male marine iguanas change color during mating season, which meant the piles of iguanas were either really manly football huddles, or really gay orgies.

Tatjiana led our group down the designated trail, passed more piles of iguanas, lava lizards, sea lions and Galapagos oystercatcher birds. Sand flies came in every direction and there was a lot of self-slapping going around.

SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT BIGGER IS BETTER, but when you are a wandering albatross -- the massive endemic bird of Española island -- and wish to fly, size could be a problem. Wandering albatrosses get over this obstacle by walking to the edge of a cliff and jumping off with their wings spread, hoping to catch air currents to lift them up high. Tatjiana led us to these cliffs where we saw the clumpsy birds launch downwards and glide right back up.

While on land, wandering albatrosses have a different behavior, particularly in the act of dating. When two albatrosses are courting, they do a courtship dance for hours by knocking each other's beak together like a swordfight. "I think it's so beautiful," Tatjiana said, all the while I'm thinking in my head, "How's that for kinky foreplay?" Anyway, after the two birds make out, they become mates for life, and all without the hassles of pre-nuptial agreements.

At one point, we saw two albatrosses really going at it while a lone one sat nearby. I figured he was the pizza delivery bird who was just there to watch.

Wandering albatrosses should really get their own soap opera because we stumbled upon a courtship dance between a male and female. They were making out with their little beakplay until another male came along; the female then started dancing with the new guy. The other male stayed near and soon the female was making out with two guys, back and forth. Nearby was another couple and the female making out with the two guys started making out with the third male for an albatross three-way. The other female got angry, but the first female just kept on going at it.

"What a slut," I said. If not a soap opera, then definitely a reality show on FOX.

WE WALKED ALONG THE CLIFFS passed masked boobies -- the biggest boobies of them all (hee hee) -- as the sun set (picture above), making the sky a dramatic pink, glowing from behind the clouds. The tide came in and ocean waves crashed into the rocks, sometimes through "blowholes" in the rock, forming geysers of ocean mist.

WITH ONLY FOUR AMERICANS ON THE SHIP, Thanksgiving dinner wasn't a big deal -- we had breaded steaks and mashed potatoes instead of turkey and football. However, after the not-so-special meal, we finished the night off with a nice American Pie -- a screening of the movie that is.

The Free Enterprise sailed through the night over big rolling ocean waves and most people -- including myself -- started to get a little sea sick. I managed to watch the whole DVD until I couldn't hold in my nausea any longer and just went to sleep.

So far I have been on a computer for about ten hours straight today, back in Puerto Ayora, trying to catch up on The Blog...I'm totally beat and my brain is fried, so I will continue later...very soon! Stay tuned for "Postcards From A Weirdo," the exciting conclusion of the Galapagos boat trip!

Postcards From A Weirdo

DAY 40: For my fourth and final scuba dive, I went underwater around Enderby Rock, a popular dive site off the coast of Isla Floreana. It was a very good ending to my series of dives; I saw two Galapagos sharks, a huge school of baracudas, puffers, and sea turtles -- all swimming around a beautiful coral reef grown over lava rocks.

BACK DURING THE DAYS OF WHALING, sailors in these parts set up a "post office" on Floreana Island in which they would mail letters and packages to their loved ones back home. There wasn't exactly a postal service or FedEx at the time, so what they did was just pick up the mail of letters addressed to places near their destinations. For example, if a sailor from London found a letter addressed to a street in London or a nearby town, he'd pick it up and hand-deliver it whenever he got back home. The system was slow but effective, and with a personal touch. Publishers' Clearing House would have hated it.

The tradition of the personal delivery service is still in use today, only the sailors' letters have been replaced with tourists' postcards. I dropped off my first round of postcards (to those of you who e-mailed your addresses to me) when we landed at the site, appropriately named "Post Office Bay." On most of my cards I wrote something to the effect of "I hope the guy hand-delivering this to you isn't a total weirdo." Only time will tell.

We sorted through the piles of cardstock, most of which were addressed to countries in Europe. A majority of that stack was addressed to people in Denmark, which gave Birgit a fairly big load to lug with her.

As far as the American stack, most were addressed to people in California -- giving Navid a fair share to deliver. I was designated to take the mere four cards addressed to the NY/NJ/CT tri-state area, which I plan to deliver when I can, or face a bad curse according to Tatjiana. So, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Johnson of Westport, CT; Mrs. Connie Marince of Trenton, NJ; Amy & Joe Red Delicious of Greenwood Lake, NY; and Jeff Benney of Whippany, NJ...if you're out there, you can expect a weirdo (me) knocking on your door with outdated postcards sometime in 2005 (or until my money runs out, whichever comes first.) I suppose with that kind of delivery timeframe, that puts me on the bottom of the parcel delivery hierarchy, just after Mr. McFeely from Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

FROM POST OFFICE BAY, we continued down the path to a huge, dark lava tunnel -- which always gets me excited because I get to wear my headlamp and pretend I'm a miner. We crawled under an overhang in the rock and entered the pitch-black darkness and walked to a dead end where, out of all the things Mauricio could suggest to do, we did a group photo. In a regular circumstance, the "tour group photo" session is quite an ordeal -- the guide who takes all the cameras has to sit there and figure out how to use each one, and a typical conversation goes something like this:

Guide: Did it take?
Tourist: No.
Guide: Did it take?
Tourist: No, I didn't see the flash.
Guide: Now?
Tourist: No.
Guide: Did it take?
Tourist: Gimme that thing.

Tour group photos are a particularly longer ordeal to do this completely in the dark with a flashlight.

"This is taking so long. I think my postcard is in Holland already," Maartin joked.

After the photo session, Tatjiana suggested to the group that everyone turn off their lights and just sit in the dark for a minute. What this was suppose to achieve I don't know -- all it did was make us lose focus on an object and make us feel like we were swaying back and forth like we were on the boat again. I thought it might be funny to, in the middle of the darkness, lay a nice loud fart to spawn a series of immature fifth grader jokes -- Whoever smelt it, dealt it is my personal fave -- but I had nothing saved up in my reserves.

ALONG THE TRAIL OF FLOREANA, Tatjiana took us to one of her favorite overlooks in all of the archipelago, with a view of the massive salty lagoon where pink flamingos fished for food with their heads submerged in the water. At the beach, Mauricio was on the lookout for a stingray sighting near the shore, and eventually found one near us under cover of sand. After my jellyfish incident, I wasn't really for another stinger attack, so I just chased red ghost crabs along the sand until they hid in their dug out holes. I saw one taking a dead snake home for dinner.

THE LAST SNORKEL SESSION OF THE TRIP was at Devil's Crown, yet another piece of geology named after Earth's number one bad boy. Devil's Crown is a collapsed crater in the middle of the ocean, a popular site for harmless shark sightings. I was on the look for them, hoping I could get a photo of one like James did the day before when one circled around him, but the only excitement I got was when Sean, in a sea kayak from above, yanked my snorkel around by surprise and scared the hell out of me. (In retrospect, it was pretty funny.)

THE FREE ENTERPRISE SAILED THROUGH THE AFTERNOON along the open ocean back to Puerto Ayora. We killed time watching bootlegs of Tomb Raider 2 and S.W.A.T. as the boat rocked back and forth, harder than I had felt before. I actually fell out of my chair and onto the floor, after of which the chair fell on top of me as I rolled away. Perhaps it was because Manuel was manning the wheel for a while with thoughts of chicas rubias.

As we eased into harbor, I talked with Tatjiana on the portside deck. I was originally planning to ask her out to dinner in town, but dinner was already scheduled on the ship before disembarkation. Instead, I tried to get her to come out dancing at night and see where it would lead from there, but she wasn't too interested. She was tired and just wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed for a change. "I am going to work back on the ship at six in the morning," she informed me.

While I went off to dinner with the tour group, Tatjiana got a ride back to harbor in a dingy. She never gave me or anyone else a formal goodbye, not even a wave back to the boat. Perhaps to her I was just another random client in a long line of clients that come and go. I knew I should have inflated my scrotum for the added attention! Oh well.

NO MATTER, I WAS BACK IN TOWN with new friends and what better place to bring friends than the "Los Amigos" hostel where I had stayed the week before. Rosa and her daughter Veronica were still there with lots of empty rooms for us. James got a private room, Sean and Sonya got a couple's room, and I shared a room with Birgit.

"Look at that, it's Erik," Gwen said in her Scottish accent. She and Steve were still at the hostel, in almost the same state I left them -- around the common table with box Chilean wine and their guitar.

"Has it been six days already?" she asked. "Seems like you just left the other day." I felt like I had been gone a month.

We all went down to Limon y Cafe, the bar/club everyone in town seemed to convene at, especially when a lot of ships are in town for the night. Jorge and Gustavo welcomed me back with handshakes, smiles and most importantly, beers. The other members of the Free Enterprise were there as well, including Mauricio and Ty (still in his same outfit without shoes), to dance and drink the night away. We grabbed a long table in the back and reminisced like old naval buddies coming back from battle.

I still had my battle scar from the Portuguese Man of War.