La Selva

Please see the Loopy Post for photo info.

It took 13 hours to get there- eight hours by night bus, 3 hours by dirt road, and 2 hours by boat but there I was in the middle of the Ecuadorian Jungle. To sum up the experience I would say it was seductive and enchanting.

Within 10 min. we were face to face with an anaconda, the snake that would make several appearances through out the next few days. Our first night we walked into a dense jungle and saw 12 -15 different kinds of spiders my favorite being the scorpion spider which was bigger than my hand and looked hungry for some of my skin. We spent the next few days running up and down the incredible maze of rivers, fresh water dolphins jumping in front of our boat, toucans and blue and yellow macaws flying overhead, monkeys jumping from tree to tree. I ate ants that tasted like lime, walked through a bog with leeches, fished for piranas, stood a foot away from a growling camin (like a crocodile but not as dangerous) and got so badly attacked by biting ants I almost stripped my pants off. (That is the seductive part)

The most incredible moments were when we took the canoes upstream about a mile and jumped in the water and floated back down. White and yellow butterflies would land on our head as huge blue ones (shown in the Mindo post) would float beside us. At night we would go to the lagoon to watch the sunset and float back with the stars above us and firefly's lighting our way. It was the first nights of my trip where I could tell I was at the center of the earth with the Southern Cross to my back and the Big Dipper ahead. There are few things that I have seen that are as terrifying and beautiful as the jungle at night. And that was it five days of petrifying, magical, unadulterated bliss.

***May we each have moments where our shadows unhinge and the world opens its electric, glittering secrets.***

For Pictures see: http://picasaweb.google.com/alliebird/LaSelvaBestOf

And now for a word on the environment.

Appropriate for this trip I have been reading Jared Dimond´s second book Collapse. His basic argument is that societies collapse because of a dangerous cocktail of environmental degradation and population overgrowth. The question that pops up in each area he covers is the question ¨why, if there societies resources were dwindling did the society keep operating in the same way?¨ He gives numerous examples of how very smart intelligent people make obvious dumb decisions. While I believe that many people in the US and around the world are working to alleviate the massive environmental destruction that industrialization, population growth, improved quality of life and the desire to drive big cars has had on our natural resources, I also think we need to reinforce why we need to downsize.

I think it is hard to become accustom to a standard of living, recognize that it is destructive and then take active measures to change that life style. If it was easy, everyone (including the guy sitting next to me) would stop smoking, watch less TV, eat less wheat, sugar, coffee, grow their own food, give more hugs, stop paying pharmaceutical companies egregious amounts of money, build cities that were entirely walkable and made of all local resources and hold politicians and businesses accountable when they are being wack posers. But I drive too much and the guy sitting next to me likes to smoke, so we all have something to work on.

What has been instructive to me in Ecuador is becoming acutely aware of the increasingly complicated tangled relationships between the Global North and Global South ( First World/Third World, Developed and Developing Countries). I wake up in the morning, walk out-side and drive my car to work. I do not see any oil pipe lines threading through my homeland rainforest, nor do I feel fear that I will have to decide between selling my land to oil prospectors or feed my kids. I am sufficiently removed from the process. That is the first problem, my everyday reality is completely reliant on thousands of invisible moving parts.
I push a button my computer turns on, I don´t sit and think or thank the guys in some far off country that mined the metals that ensure that the thing works. I do curse a lot when it doesn´t work.

Or lets take something more benign, because so many of my friends are hip to the oil issues. Let´s take shrimp, who doesn´t like a shrimp cocktail now and then. Shrimp are another major Ecuadorian export to the US; oil, shrimp, bananas and flowers are the biggies. Shrimp farms account for the massive destruction of the Mangroves on the cost. Mangroves are carefully woven ecosystems that are responsible for housing hundreds of species of marine life along with the bonus of being erosion control. Like many resource extraction ventures, unless there is a rapidly renewable resource or conditions of sustainability are imposed from the beginning, resources become exhausted and the business is no longer viable. This has already happened on Ecuador´s coast and instead of businesses saying, ¨ok, well our shrimp farm needs to close, we should probably replant the mangroves and restock the fish and marine life¨, they up and leave. That leaves people who formally lived off the marine life, who then became dependant on the shrimp farms for income, without either.

Banana Republics are infamous propagators of environmental and social destruction because they take fertile lands with knowledgeable farmers who have sustained many crops on their lands and turn the land fallow and the people into virtually indentured servants. I am not going to go into a lengthy explanation here but if you want more info I encourage you to read: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koppel.

OK, but lets keep this close to home. Say you have created a life style where everything you need is in biking distance, you never use plastic, you hate shrimp, you prefer native grasses to roses, detest bananas and besides your a nationalist and don´t care about other countries. Well, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil are responsible for care taking for the Amazon, which in turn is responsible for a third of all oxygen we breath. Its pretty cool that as we have started moving towards more of a globalized capitalism these countries haven´t started demanding compensation for our oxygen intake. Ecuador, is also a country hinging between developed and developing, which means that a lot of its people are still immigrating. And we all know how much people in the US love immigrants. When we (I use we because it is the consumers in tandem with the businesses and governments that create a problem, because we can demand better business practices and better government regulations), so when we tear apart the rain forests to construct roads for pipelines, or pull out mahogany trees hundreds of years old to build our desks, or eat shrimp from farms that are tearing out mangroves, we are destabilizing land that makes it possible for people to sustain themselves in their homeland.

When I read things like this, or worst, when I have first hand experience I usually feel sufficiently paralyzed, which is of course not the point. We are here to enjoy life and live well. I believe that we have the opportunity everyday to make small impacts:

• acknowledging our own beliefs, desires and attitudes that have adverse impacts on others (vague yes, but when we become part of a conversation when we own our imperfections)
  
• educating ourselves on where our food is coming from
  
• spending a little more money on consumables that are produced in sustainable ways (and this means getting familiar with the business and certification standards that are actually making a significant impact)
• recycling, not just in the blue bin outside but looking at what you are about to trash and try and imagine another use for it (i.e. cleaning your sandwich bags, re-purposing old carpet)
  
• getting comfortable on public transport, bikes and foot (my biggest problem)
• the way we vote
  

Then there are the moments where we have an opportunity to make a really big impact:

• The decision to have a small family of maybe just you and your partner or only having one child. Population growth in the First World is one of the biggest problems we are facing. If every person in the world had the standard of living as those in the US we would need the resources of 6 earths.
• Buying, building and furnishing a house.
• The place we work, and what kind of professional culture we push for
• If we are endowed with some money, how that money is invested or donated
• Minimize or stop traveling by jet plane
• When we start moving all of our energy into building a better world and stronger communities
  

I stand on no pedestal as I say these words, I am probably just as responsible for trees being felled on some endangered species last nesting spot as the next guy. I just would feel completely soulless to have come out of this beautiful country without acknowledging that both this trip and my life back home is far from the ¨leave no trace¨ philosophy no matter how many ecohotels I stay in. My public commitment coming out of this trip is that I need to drive less. I was profoundly impacted by the beauty of the jungle here, as you will shortly read and part of that was coming face to face with some ugly realities of oil extraction. I will also be making a donation to an organization that works to reforest areas and create alternative incomes for indigenous people impacted by oil production. You are welcome to join me in either of those commitments.

Lastly, I want to leave you more inspiring news from the political front. Ecuador´s President Correa fired his two top defense ministers signaling massive reforms on the defense front. He sited the military being too entrenched by the CIA as the primary reason. My last major trip involved first hand encounters with a country severely impacted by the CIA. This is a hugely exciting symbol of the kind of change many have been working on for decades.

Loopy

The pre-script to this and the next two posts is that my both of my camera cables failed and are boycotting me loading photos. They are exhausted. I have created two ´best-of´ albums on my Picasa account that I invite you to peruse. You can reach them by copy and pasting links at bottom or getting yourself over to Picasa and searching for alliebird. Look for the two albums with BEST-OF in their title (Quilotoa Best-of and La Selva Best-of). My one warning is that while other albums are open to look through, I have taken 2000 photos here and you may get tired)

And now for our feature story:
Laguna Quilotoa is a volcanic crater lake located at the end of the world. The climbing is exhilarating and frightening, at points. Certain portions required arms and legs, others required knowledge of tightrope walking and still others were just an ash desert complete with a lot of panting on my part. But the alkaline lake set against the lupin and snow capped Cotopaxi is breathtaking. For hours my old friend Vanessa were the only two we could see for miles, a refreshing change from Cali´s overcrowded trails.

Unless you have your own car it is impossible to make the trip in a day. Getting in and out takes a combination of several buses and pick-ups. We took it slow and spent 4 days, giving us ample time to adjust to the altitude and check out the animals.

Most amazing (after the lake itself) was the farming communities tilling on 60-75% grades.
Check the pix:
http://picasaweb.google.com/alliebird/QuilotoaBestOf

Gooooooooooaaaaaaalllllllllllllllll!!!!

I have officially slammed the Fright Nite vote.  Closing polls put me at 75%, better than most candidates could ever hope for.

Next up:

World Cup v. Super Bowl

Football v. Football

Crash Course Politics

Three weeks in country does not afford me the knowledge to give any real sense of the political climate of Ecuador. However, because I have found some stories to be inspiring I wanted to share them, especially as we work through our own political tectonic movements. Ecuador is 41% indigenous originating from the Inca Empire, 9% Afro-Ecuadorian whose ancestors were brought over as slaves and 51% mestizo (or mixed) Spanish usually with indigenous blood. The transition from pre to post Colombian times is, in broad strokes, the same guns, germs and steel tragedy that befell North America.

This messed up paradigm continued for a few centuries until a mestizo, Swiss educated doctor/lawyer/reporter named Eugenio Espejo, started a newspaper and a organizing project which eventually lead (with the work of many others) to Ecuador`s Independence from Spain in 1820. As those of us from the US know, independence doesn`t mean the country is given back to its original inhabitants, nor does it mean reparations are paid to those who were enslaved and it certainly does´t undo the tangle of cultures woven into the blood and features of the children. What it does do, is leave the country and its occupants to work out how the newly formed country will function.

Another century or so has passed with a smattering of liberal and conservative governments, a few assassinations and uprisings and we arrive (with some major information gaps) at the present moment. Rafael Correa is the president of Ecuador. Though there is an old guard of political parties similar to our own, he comes from Alliancia Pais, a relatively new and liberal party. While corruption still is pervasive and the day to day has its problems he is a popular president who is well liked by those I have spoken with. My favorite story of his presidency are his first acts as president. May this be a lesson to our future president:

What you need to know before I launch into this story is that after a terrible bought of inflation the country turned to the US dollar for stabilization and is currently running its economy in US dollars. While the stabilization is a good thing, the prices have risen far beyond what they were before (i.e. a liter of milk that was about .10cents is now closer to $3.00) and our dollar is loosing its footing in the global market. The other thing you need to know is the average monthly income is between $180-$250.

So before Correa was instated, the congress decided they needed a raise. They thought $4,000 didn`t uphold the kind of life style they desired and it was exhausting running a country, $8,000 sounded much better. The people didn`t like that and voted in Correa who didn`t like that either. His first acts were as follows:
1. Turn down the $8,000 offer, $4,000 was good enough for him.
2. Dissolve the Congress, they were wack robbers.
3. Write a law stating that nobody in public office could make more then the president.
Then he took the savings earned from downsizing the salaries and put it all towards education and health care. He then looked at the poverty line and realized that well over half the population is below it. Why?? well among other reasons, they don`t have land. So he went to all of the rich people and said `I want to buy all of that land you have on the coast. I`ll give you a fair price, what do you say?` and the rich people said, `sounds good, I have a few other homes anyway`. Then he broke up the land and sold it back to the landless people for basement prices.

If it sounds familiar, you`ve been doing a good job keeping up on your South American lefty presidents. Chavez did something similar in Venezuela, except he took the land from the rich folks. If you like the story of just taking the land, I understand that, the ancestors of many of the poor Venezuelans had rights to that land way before the rich folks stole it from them. The thing is, that when you take things from people it usually causes a storm, which from what I hear is a partial problem for Chavez. Correa has his problems too, but not like Chavez.

Back to Ecuador. People had land, public education (which you formally had to pay for) was now free but at $180 a month people couldn't meet their basic needs so he instituted a agricultural credit program. This enables people to buy seeds, housing materials, pigs, which have been described to me as better than a bank account.

In reading the newspaper and talking with various Ecuadorians I don`t get the sense that all of this makes the truly difficult social and environmental problems disappear, nor do I get the sense that this is left wing smoke and mirrors. I believe that people believe in the leadership that they voted in, and I believe that there are some radical steps being taken to alleviate problems that have saturated peoples lives for centuries. In that context, it is quite inspiring to be here. In my own life, it is important to get up every day and go to work for a place that I feel is trying to change the material conditions of peoples lives individually and systemically. But it is exhausting to feel like a drop in the ocean whose currents are doing everything they can to make you disappear. To be in a place where the tide is in your favor opens doors formally painted shut. I have come from a place that wanted to tear apart the machine and live in a state of cooperative anarchy to a place that really values great leadership. It is imperative to know that models exist a mere plane ride away.

All that being said, even if you have your mind set that Obama is your man and you are doing the requisite campaigning, I highly recommend looking into what is going on in South America and other parts of the world. Lula in Brazil has some really great agriculture programs going on, for those still hankering for a female president look at Chile`s Michelle Bachelet and Argentina`s Cristina Fernández de Kirchnerv and for a really amazing story look at Bolivia who voted in the first indigenous president, Evo Morales on the continent (along with a fantastic anti water privatization movement). Look at Venezuela for a model constitution, but I encourage you to read between the lines of the Chavez love story, for no leader is perfect and that is important too. Our culture is far too insular and it will help us develop a great list of do`s and don`ts to give to our president, congress person and local government.

Lodo is the Word for Mud!

Parque Cajas Hella frio

Cajas is the park of a million lakes, the following story is not from this park but is my favorite lake story.

In a time before airplanes or the World Wide Web there was a woman who fell in love with a snake. They loved each other madly but could never marry because she was a woman and he was a snake. Many men fell at her feet but she would only have Snake. Overtime their love grew into a pregnancy, which followed with her being disowned by her family. Sadly, the complications of interanimalmilman childbirth made her loose the baby and she committed suicide by drowning herself. When she ran into the lake she splintered into a million pieces of gold, which for many generations seduced men from far and wide. They would dip their hands into the water and pull out the gold, when they couldn't´t reach it by hand they would walk into the water. First just to their ankles and then to their knees until they too would drown in their lust. She still lives in a lake around here seducing men into her depths.

Cuenca, ah, cuenca

By the end of this trip, the longest stasis I will have had is a week and that will be my week in Cuenca. If all things were as I wished I would have spent two weeks here, but alas even vacations are subjected to constricted schedules and logistical ballets. I think Cuenca is like SF. The chicos are skate rats (although who knows how they skate on broken concrete and cobble stone), there are a fair share of leather bears, it is foggy, expensive and has hella tourists. I like it for most of those reasons and because there is an endless stream of things I am enamored by.

Cuenca is known for its colonial structures and just like the SF victorian houses, the colonial ones are owned by the rich folks and protected by the municipality. So all of us tourists walk around this one area, think we have had our communion with Cuenca and fly back to our respective homes. Of course Cuenca is far more complicated then the tourist area where I have spent most of my time.

On the morning of my birthday I woke up earlier than I should have and accidently joined morning mass at the main cathedral. This is what it was like: (while looking at these photos you have to imagine this echoing gothic music wafting around this scene)

The other thing Cuenca is known for is the hats, which are know to the rest of the world as the Panama Hat. The Lonely Planet version of this story is basically, these hats have always been made here. During the building of the Panama Canal they were exported to Panama and hence they became mis-named The Panama Hat.

Standard and Superfino Weave

Happy Happy Birthday

I have a history of ignoring my birthday. Not because I disdain getting older but because I have been traumatized by the music and I am usually working. So I celebrate on other days, when my birthday does´t compete with summer camps and vacations etc... But I am warming to the whole idea of being immune from logistical chaos, petty attitudes and instead, being loved just for being here. (For those on facebook thanks for the rush of love).
The morning consisted of seeing 400 different types of orchids.

To explain what happens next you should know that I am living in a bar.

The "bar" is more of a cafe that stays up late, plays loud music and serves a variety of beer and cocktails. So I guess that would qualify it as a bar/cafe. It is a tourist joint that attracts a lot of Ecuadorians. I live with Jane and Camila pictured below and Tom runs as our side kick. They represent the Motherland. England.

We met on a bus and decided to live in the "bar" together. As traveling goes, good friends come and go fast and hard. You develop a certain quick love and trust and become a micro family for anywhere between a meal to several weeks. You check in on each other, e-mail for about a week after you separate, call years later when you visit their various countries.

I thought my day would be your run of the mill, see a bunch of flowers and go to spanish class kind of birthday. But my traveling fam came through with a big cake and insisted on steak restaurant (actually they insisted that I choose the restaurant and I chose steak). The big cake gave me up to the owner of the restaurant who rushed over a bottle of wine and a cocktail. The steak place was Ecuadorian/Argentinian fare and as Argentinian meals go we waited for an hour or so to get some really really delicious steak. Then I invited everyone in the restaurant, which included some German/Swiss girls and the staff for cake.

So a bunch of strangers became my party and we got down in our various languages trying to do the intercontinental dinner party thang.

The footnote to this picture is that Aerosmith was bumpin´ in the back ground

The Nose of the Devil

I said earlier that god may exist in the Andes, but I have been corrected it is the devil who lives here and his nose is avalible to ride via train. Who could resist that, especially when it is on top of the train down swtichbacks??

All in all a beautiful adventure. The devil is seductive.

Polls!!

Well folks, more of you are night riders than sea fairing folk. Shooting stars win to Nessie.

We now have a new poll. There is a group of my friends who have developed this portrait style called shaky face. I don´t have examples but get a camera, relax your face and snap away. The result is pretty funny. On Brianna´s last night we developed a new portrait style called squishy face.

Brianna and I are good friends:

We have lived together for about 10 years and are two very sweet girls.
But Ecuador brought out some new sides we have never seen. We thought we were both scary but couldn´t decide who was scarier. So we are enlisting your support to tell us who is scarier. While both of us are in both pictures, we are asking you to vote for my face in the first picture and Brianna´s face in the second picture. Look here and scroll down to vote at the bottom of the blog. Results to be posted at a later date.

Fright Nite.

Super Fly

Our friend Julie left college, went to Hawaii, fell in love, became a bird nerd and now Julie and Ray (the love) are becoming doctor Bird Nerds. So they spend their lives flying across the hemispheres bird nerding it up. Luckily for us, the bird she pines for flies to Ecuador so we got to catch her in the cloud forest of Mindo.

Checking out Toucan Sam

We decided that the best thing to do in a cloud forest was to dangle hundreds of feet from the ground. You have probably seen pictures before, or done it yourself. Basically, it is a suped-up ropes course. It was cool and fast, there were a lot of trees. But after a few lines it gets boring so we prefer to do tricks like this:

They call this the Mariposa, we thought it looked like something else.

Brianna how did that feel?

After that Mariposa we wanted to get down with the real thing, so we charged on over to Mariposas del Mindo. National Geographic what!?

Charanga Time

My brother is a bit of a bohemian, and being the urban bohemian rennaisance man he is, his one request was a Charanga. ¨What is a Charanga?¨ I asked in the sort of, what-kind-of-mission-are-you-putting-me-on, way. It turns out that it is a small Andean guitar, small enough not to impose too much extra weight on Brianna or me, so off to the Charanga store it was.

The whole thing ended up being pretty fun. I found a shop that was crowded with musicians. I ended up buying the Charanga seen here. Max, this is your new toy; for the rest of you enjoy.
(I apologize for the sideways view of the movies shown on this blog, my techie spanish needs improvement.)

Super Mercado

Not for the faint of heart

In the US we have pretty much all material wants at our fingertips. You want it bigger, faster, stronger, no problem. But at some point during our industrialization we lost our community markets. SF is trying to recoup this loss with our overpriced ferry building market, but Otavalo puts SF and most of the rest of the world to shame.

Brianna and I were two of 7 tourists that were in Otavalo for the week, come Friday you could barely walk a block before running into some light weight pants and hiking boots. The reason for the seething masses was the world famous market that starts at 7:00am.

Things start tame. Discounts coming at you left and right, everyone is your new friend. Weavings, oversized spoons, seed jewelry, every vendor has different variations on the same theme. Its for tourists and I am a tourist so I oggle at the craftsmanship and take a bunch of pictures.

The reason people come to Otavalo is for this sort of stuff. They want the scarf, the dreamcatchers etc... and they have good reason, the volume of dreamcatchers at this market is astounding. Many good dreams to be had. The tourist market is about 6 blocks of hammocks and wall hangings.

But being the kind of tourist I am, I want to know what is on the other 45 blocks and although we hadn´t eaten and Brianna is squimish we pushed forth.

Things started to look more like things you would think twice about before lugging thousands of miles. And that was cool, at least I wasn´t everyones new best friend. But the real action came when we came upon the food market. This was where the real action was at.

But the fun was still to come! Animals, lots of them, not living, or living but in bags, which is a code for fresh meat. (this is my warning that the animals you are about to see aren´t cute)

Brianna is afraid of birds.

In the end we didn´t make it to the best part, the live animal market. Just another reason to return.