Cuyabeno National Park, Ecuador part 1.

When I found out that the bus ride from Quito to Lago Agrio was only $8.20, I had to make the trip.  The city is not that great a place, but it is the kick off point for adventure into Cuyabeno Park, and I booked a 4 day 3 night stay at Caiman Lodge.  The lodge itself was nice, rustic but clean and well maintained.  Very limited luxuries, no cell phone reception and the electricity was only on for about 3 hours a day.  The food was nice with a heavy local influence and like most Ecuadorian food, virtually no spices or herbs were used.

But on to the pictures of the river on the way to the lodge, the birds monkeys etc seen during the trip.

The first photo shows the river, and the second a few toucans perched on branches.  It was the only time I saw toucans not flying.  All the other times we could hear them but not see them as they hid behind foliage.

 

 

Two toed Sloth

Quito Ecuador, no photos

I finally got south of the equator.  Quito, the capital of Ecuador is about 16km south of the equator and at an elevation of over 9,000 feet, a temperate to cool place, rather than hot.

I thought I was mostly over a minor head cold when I flew out of Panama, but the elevation change sapped my energy and I am sure delayed my recovery.  I spent most of 5 days not doing much, walking a couple blocks, watching movies and reading.

Finally I felt like I was up to doing a little and went into the central bar and restaurant area, a very short walk from my hostel.

Man did I feel old.

Although the general population of Quito is a mix of old and young much like most other places, what I was wandering through was very much party central, and there were more bars than I have ever seen in that small an area ever before.  The vast majority of people there were under thirty.  Maybe even under twenty-five.  Mixed in with the bars were hostels, averaging over two per block, along with cafes and the odd high end restaurant.  During the day there were not that many people about, but when the sun went down, the locals came out to play, and they came out in large numbers.

The main district is about six blocks by four, but slowly blends into a commercial area to the south, full of shops hotels and professional services.

The evenings tended to be cool, and needed either a light jacket or sweater to be comfortable, but ti was well worth it to wander around and see everyone having a great time.

Quito itself is a modern city, stretched out roughly north - south in a valley.  At night the lights of the city are all but impossible to see from one spot, the valley rolls far too much and there are short ridges hiding some of the suburbs as well.  this means though that from the higher places, you can see a lot of the lights laid out below you, and if you go to a place in the lower levels where there are not many high buildings, you can see the lights spreading up the sides of the valley.

The number of truly tall buildings are few, most seem to top out in the fifteen floor range, but in a place prone to earthquakes, that makes total sense to me.

All in all it is a very nice place to visit, although I have heard it is not the safest place to walk around in after the bars close, the same can be said of a great many cities.

If the clouds clear off a bit tomorrow, I will take a tram ride to the top of a volcano that over looks the city and grab a few photos, but from what the weather forecast says, that is unlikely.

I am drawn to travel over the spine of the Andes next and into the Amazon Rainforest, a small town called Lago Agrio near a large national park.  I plan to spend a few days there, and then back to Quito to fly out for Peru.

Distances and Borders

When traveling between countries it begins to take on a sameness.  Fill out the declaration form, pay a fee, answer a few questions, stand in line and wait.  When going by bus, the waiting is the longest, watching as all the passports and documents are processed wondering if you managed to correctly fill out the form in its miniscule printing, and occasional vague wording.

These steps could be made easier I assume, but it is now a familiar thing to do, and if they made the whole process easier those who came beore would complain about how the new travelers have it so much easier. ;)

But it is that last line that really resonates with me.  How much easier.

In the late 1800's an early 1900's travel had a definite glamour.  There was no real fast way, the easy way was by ship and if your destination was not near an ocean,   the infrastructure was not in place for easy transit.

People who did ravel did so for very strong reasons.  Immigrating to a new country, exploring to find wealth, escape from oppression or prosecution.  All very valid reasons to travel, but those who traveled for the sake of new horizons were few and far between.  The sheer relative cost, the length of time away, plus the void you were stepping off into.  We truly are in the information age.  I can find out what the local language is, currency and exchange, political stability, disease, good maps,  and the list goes on and on at the click of a mouse button.

I have had a few people say that they could not leap into a different culture and travel at whim like I am, but that is nothing to me when stacked up with how other, earlier travelers went about their trips.  Travelogues, diaries and such give us a picture of the places but also the perspectives of the person writing.  Your own cultural background, what you take for granted so colours how you write about the similarities and differences of those around you.  And all of those early writings are awash in the prejudices and bias of the writer.  I am blind to my own, for the most part, but at least I know that people from other places and times will have different views.  I think I need to read a few of the travel tales to really be able to put things into place.  I have not read any fully, just a few excerpts here and there, so I think that is going to be added to my reading list very soon.

Here in Central America I look at the steep jungle covered hills, and even in the dry season the frequent streams and rivers and think about how much different and slower the travel would be.  And even that only scratches the surface of the problems.  Money and the exchange of currencies are so much easier as well as access to international transfer of funds.  Whip out your bank card and get local cash, verses travelng with either a very large amount of valuables and cash or letters of credit which would take months if not years to set up.

Taking companions along with, strong of will to help you out of any difficulties, and a few sober ones to keep all from starting trouble.  The people you meet along the way real are the meat and bones of your experience and I always imagine that in the times when getting from place to place was so much harder that the 'local flavour' was very much more felt and experience than now.
Things we take for granted as travelers like inns, hotels and hostels etc. are not easy to find and pulling over to the side if you got tired was not an option.  Chances were if you liked your creature comforts they would be few and far between in most of Central America and packing a tent etc would be de riguer.  After a few weeks of backpacking with tent etc as a youth I can well remember the welcome hot shower found in civilization after the trek was over.  How then for the traveler, struggling through jungle and making their way on rough road for weeks on end to come upon a place to rest and relax, put up your weary bones, wash the clothes have a bath and not have to deal with taking down the camp yet again.

By putting myself in that place, stretching my mind to fill in the weariness and draining effort, but also seeing new vistas and animals and plants I begin to know the travelers whose footsteps I walk in and who give me pause at their determination to stretch their own horizons and all of those that they came in contact with, both on the road and when finally back at home.


In terms of how we humans get along, from country to country I think that the travel experience and how much easier it is, is a good thing.  The world as a whole is becoming more blended, with most borders being easier to cross, shrinking not the miles but the antagonistic differences between countries.  The next major step needs to be taken by the so called first world, and ending the economic exploitation of the third.  We in the first have a hunger for cheaper and cheaper goods, which is natural, but we need to force the corporations supplying those cheap goods into ensuring a decent living wage for the employees.

The above ramble brought to you by limited sleep and a long bus ride.

Religon and Fireworks

The great use of firecrackers and fireworks in conjunction with Christian religious services is so different from what I grew up with. 

It is hard to step back and accept what these people obviously see as a significant part of their worship.  The amount of firecrackers drowned out the sound of the church bells, and the fireworks were well done, seeming to draw attention to the celebration rather than detract from it.

But as I said, it was jarringly different from what I am used to.  The number of christmas lights and small electronic devices playing christmas carols made for an annoying background noise.  The use of icons and statuary has always been something that jars against the Anglican themes I was raised in.  Once the procession started, taking a statue of Mary for a slow journey round the centre of town, there was a constant barrage of noise from both fireworks and firecrackers.  The casual use of fireworks was also something quite different, with random people setting off fireworks in spaces barely large enough for safety.  Most times there were people within five meters of the steel tubes used for launching the larger ones.  The immediacy of this meant it added to the whole scene, tying the whole crowd into the experience of the visual display.  My western eyes found the whole thing to be gaudy and over done on the one hand, but on the other hand I could see both the sincerity of the participants and going by the size of the crowd it meant that a large slice of the town joined in.

I did not stay for the whole procession, choosing to slink away when it was less than half over, and I could hear the noise echoing off the walls behind me as I went down to the lake.  I have avoided religion for the most part on this trip of mine.  I long ago accepted that different people worship god in different ways and it is not something that I choose to do.

It is too easy to mock or look down on what others do as part of their belief, and disregard the emotions and sincerity of the worshipers, forgetting that their upbringing was so different from mine and their expressions and outward display of ceremony are thus far removed from what I experienced as part of my cultural norm.  It does enhance my travel and bring me farther along the road to understanding these people and how they contrast as well as mirror those who I grew up with.

Because it was night, and personally I find flashes to be intrusive, I dd not take any photos.  I may wander up to the church in the next day or two and take a few, just to round out this article.

Eco consumerism

This is going to be  bit of a rant.

I have mostly turned a blind eye to any corporation that claims to be green.  I think that when the Norwegian government refused to endorse any cars as being green, they were on solid ethical ground.  The car in and of itself cannot be green.  It uses far too many resources, pollutes far too much and encourages waste.  Even electric cars.

As a traveler I have accepted the fact that I am not green and my travel is harming the ecology of this planet.  I am getting annoyed at the travel agencies that do 'eco' tours.  The travel part of doing eco tours destroys any green aspect of this.  Some are using decent methods for minimizing the impact of damage, using horses, mules, donkeys, buses and other methods of transport to the tour site which have a lower environmental impact.  But.  Their company model is based on tourists getting to them.  And tourists, including travelers like me use a lot of high negative impact methods to travel.  Airplanes, private vehicles, mutli-passenger vans, buses, trains, boats etc all use fossil fuels and have a high impact on the CO2 count.

I have a tough time with this personally.  I love to see new places, to wander through towns and villages, take a trail through a forest and gaze upon a horizon new to me.  I struggle with taking a plane, weighing the time/cost/pollution factors and bearing it all with me in terms of my carbon footprint.

But.

I do all this while not calling myself an eco warrior or environmental advocate.   The two are irreconcilable with traveling.

Couch surfing, getting around by motorcycle, living in a tent, minimizing the meat and dairy I eat, all help to lighten my impact.  But all that does is lighten it a little, not eliminate it.  And I am far from perfect in all of the things I mentioned.

So I have a real big problem with slapping an eco label on anything to do with tourists and consumers in general.

I read an article today on the difference between two companies, North Face and Patagonia.  They both target their sales at people in the outdoor active set, and North face is by far the winner in consumer dollars, and Patagonia is okay with that.  They are okay with that because they are not driven to make more and more money.  They are driven to make better and better products so the consumers need to consume less and less.  The current marketing stance of Patagonia is please do not buy anything unless you _really_ need it.  And if you really need it consider buying from us.  Virtually every other company out there shouts to the consumer 'you need this product we sell'.

The sad truth is in our modern dollar driven world, no we do not need more.

We want more.

Do I want a better laptop?  Yes.  Do I need one?  No.

Do I want to buy....... the list is endless, but as a consumer group, what we really need is to consume far less.  Period.  The urge to buy and buy fills an emotional need, but it does not need to exist.  If you are driven to buy, it means that there is something that is missing in your life and you need to find what is missing and replace that urge before you end up on an episode of Hoarders.

Walking through a third world market I see endless amounts of low cost items.  The small trashy toys, disposable goods and items that scream planned obsolescence to me.  I also see a fair amount of used goods from the first world.  This is a disturbing trend as it is either showing how little use we make of an item, or it shows that the first world is shoving its trash on the third.

We as consumers need better products that we can use up entirely, ones that last multiple generations and have a life cycle in the decades, not days or months.   I have seen kids toys that have lasted generations, and cookware that has as well.  The few who consider this a great thing needs to get bigger and the people who demand quality goods that will stand the test of time to allow us to get off the endless buy cycle needs to turn into the majority.

The 2nd hand market is strong, and I applaud that.  Re-cycling is great, giving away things to people who will use them is terrific.  Buying a smaller home is even better.  Buying a car with great fuel economy is good.  Making the most of your current vehicle before investing in a different one is better.  Not having one at all is best.

There is a lot more to say on this topic, but I will leave that for now, and just condense my message.  If you consume anything that has required the use of fossil fuels to make or distribute do not make the error of calling it green.  At best it is green-ish.  There is a growing chunk of society that says consuming less is okay.  Join it.  There are ways to replace the urge to buy new stuff to fill an emotional hole in your life.  Find them.  Make the most of the things you have, buy quality items to last a long time.  Do not confuse want with need.

Next time you feel the obsession to impulse shop, maybe make a small item and give it to a friend.  Go for a walk.  Write a letter.

Heck, even post something on your blog.

Stuck in San Pedro

Okay, not so much stuck as just too lazy to move on.

I spent two weeks raising my Spanish fluency level from horrid to really bad.

And then I dropped my laptop about six inches onto a cement floor.

Dead hard drive, had Win7 installed on the new hard drive and went off in quest of drivers to run everything on the damn machine.  Three days later, I have full functionality back.  It is no fun tracking down drivers for NIC and wireless.  Once I got the wired connection working, it was only about another four hours to get the wireless running.

Next step is to see if there is any way of recovering the data from the dead drive.  If not I see a lot of downloading in my near future.  The old drive was 750 GB and was well over half full.......

In other tempting news, there are a number of businesses for sale around this area.  Three hostels and one resort hotel.

A brief look at the hotel scratched it off the buy list.  Lake Atitlan is slowly rising, there is no surface exit for the water, it makes its way out through fissures in the rock and the lake is now approaching levels last seen in 1974, the last time there was a major earthquake in the region.  The level of the lake fell fifteen meters in under 6 months but has since slowly crept back up.  The Hotel has several of it's buildings right on the water's current edge.

If the lake continues to rise at its current rate, one of the other hostels will lose it's cafe/bar in under 3 years.

That leaves two viable hostels to look closer at.  Both of them are doing solid business, the owners are selling for personal reasons, not financial .  It would be fun to run one for a while, but I can see myself getting tired of it in under five years and it turning into a giant drag.  It is very hard to backpack with a full hostel in your pack.

On the other hand if anybody reading this blog want to own their own business, having a steady proven income and live in a Spanish speaking country with a thriving tourist trade, send me a note.

All for now, back to filling the new hard drive.

Remembrance Day

Sometimes I think about the differences between Canada and the USA, and for the most part they are not great, but once in a while things strike me.

When Remembrance Day (it was originally Armistice Day) was first brought forward in Canada, the veterans decided that the day would be dedicated to remembering the war veterans from all wars.  There were to be no flags attached directly to the Day, as it was to honour the deeds from all sides of every conflict.

Unit flags are welcome, and items such as those, but veterans of WWII from Germany, Italy, France, England etc, have all been equally honoured here.

We are proud of our efforts as a nation in WWI, II etc, but the day is not to honour our efforts as a nation or people, but to recall that on both sides of every conflict are people, and many of those people deserve their efforts to be recognized just as much as those from 'our' side.

Who won, who was right, which side we believe deserved to win, which side we support is irrelevant on this day for me.  That you served with honour, pride and determination is what matters.

Different from what is celebrated in the USA, as there, their own county's veterans are who take centre stage.

This may seem like I disapprove of what they do, and it is not, really.  But it does highlight a difference between the cultures.