a list of things that are ecuatorianamente refrescante

- the little town between Quito and Ambato that seems to consist of nothing but ice cream shops, with brightly painted popsicles flaunting on every other concrete wall
- the salsa remix of ¨Billie Jean¨
- garbage cans shaped like clowns or cartoon characters´heads (the Bart Simpson one is particularly grotesque)
- Drinkable Kiosko yoghurt. WHY is there no drinkable yoghurt in the EEUU WHY WHY WHY it is beyond delicious.
- plastic bags of mandarinas sold by children on the street, 10 for $1
- handing over a $1 bill and holding your breath while you wait for the inevitable question from the storekeeper: tienes cambio? (do you have change?)
- uncoooked french fries, squishy white in the middle
- juices with the consistency of marmalade
- rows of houses with open roofs, piles of gravel and sand in the yard, in a seemingly frozen limbo of construction and rennovation
- mean dogs barking at you and snapping at your heels. Brian, who is proficent at a Phillipino form of martial arts, commented that he had to refine his technique to fight the dogs rather than the humans here, since they were a bigger threat.
- old women in braids leading cows or donkeys around on frayed rope
- gasoline at $1.48
- the ¨camaron camaron camaron camaron¨ song and the ¨creo en Jesus Cristo, quien me va llevar al cielo¨ accordion ditty, easily heard on any bus sound system
- foreigners in sandals, shorts, and those olive green knee-high drawstring pants
- political graffiti: Colombia Hermano, Uribe Terrorista, Armas de Destruccion Masiva: Television, Radio, Media, Mucho Mineria, Poco Amazonia.
- hairy fuzzy pigs on the side of the road
- brown toilet paper; in Corey´s words, ¨Bible paper.¨
- yoghurt-flavored Bon Ice. I´m going to miss Bon Ice so much. They´re these folks dressed up in bright blue suits with a polar bear logo, selling these tube-filled frozen ice creams and yoghurts, with yummy tropical fruit flavors.
- the sweet thick smell of Palo Santo, a kind of incense: it looks like a thick piece of wood, and it´s burned to drive the evil spirits away, which more often than not consist of the evil poo-smelling spirits hovering over the single toilet in a house which has up to nine people living in it, all of whom have their bowels affected in one way or another by the lovely grease-rich diet.
- dead roasted pigs in wheelbarrows
- The guts market at La Floresta, a lively outdoor barbecue venue that sells all the intestines and stomach lining you can eat, right by our house. If guts aren´t your thing, they´re are always the deliciously amazingly bad for you yucca fries, which we successfully made ourselves the other day (note: frying yucca takes a LOT of grease, and it´s a good idea to cut it with a machete, and also to boil it first before frying).

I´ll try to think of more to add here................

As written earlier, our time in Ecuador is coming to an end! A new adventure in Portland is about to begin! (or more specifically, in Milwaukie, at the infamous duck pond house). Our plans for it include chickens and a huge garden. For the time being, we have a ticket to return to Quito on January17th 2009. I´m not sure what will happen between now and then, but anyway, we have a ticket, and there´s a group for Mexico that may be coming in January for Amazon Mycotour Version 2.0, so there´s that too. Until their return to ´keets in November, Jess and Brian will be running around California-Montana-Oregon-Illinois attending speaking events, so hopefully that will result in some useful promotion and outreach. I´m not sure what will happen to this blog during our time in Oregon; I´m thinking we´ll maybe use it for mushroom-hunting related posts and so on (without giving away our location secrets, of course!). And we´ll keep posting stuff about the Amazon Mycorenewal Project, the Amazon Defense Front and the Cuyabeno reserve, naturally.

On that note, the Chevron case is moving forward(this is an audio file sent to me by a Reedie alumni freelance journalist, also living in Quito).

Also, here are Danny´s awesome flickr photos of the first (and hopefully not the last!) official Amazon Mycotour. Danny´s an awesome photographer with a kickass camera; I really recommend checking them out... I especially like this one of Corey-- it really captures the whole Mad-Scientist-Geek side of his personality).

guapulove

Corey typing now... The Guapulo bus is a beast of burden, a lazy fat hobbit, and a bumpy ball bender all at once. The bus system in Quito is a fuming cauldron of black vapors that make my eyes burn and throat sore, Guapulo is much cleaner...though the perrenial dog orgy makes one think.

Los Conquistadoresy La Tolita...my Quito home...whole roasted pigs in wheel barrowsThis is me scratching my ass I think...We climb this hill every day...a couple times...it still makes me tired...eeek

Graffiti.

This is my best good friend Bubba and no we are not relations...No shrimp boats in the Andes but randomly placed donkeys can often be observed pooping.

Brian A. Pace and Corey R. Guidry, esquire, smoking cuban cigars...We like tobacco sometimes.

Ashley Jordana Payaguaje, aka Super Jungle Baby, is shown here in her Chanel hammock with matching versace drool blanket. This is Don Delio´s baby, she is a new Siona-Secoya person who will have to deal with the strange contrasts of living in a national park(3 hours downriver) and trying to interact with the outside world. We brought her a blanket, the green one, I think she peed on it.

This is Motora (Grillo).Sshe is a little stray cat we adopted. I´m allergic to cats...but damn she´s cute.
Another cat photo...and some species of jungle monkey... J. pachicoensis.

mmmm garbage

An average American family goes out for Sunday brunch.

It´s interesting living in Guapulo because you´re in this village valley with chickens and pigs and donkeys and eucalyptus forest and then you look up and it´s the city skyline hovering above you...

These are some black people who tried to attack us. According to most South American these people are dreadfully dangerous...

Another chicken of the woods...Jess discovered it...it was kinda corky...

Hmmm..in what activity are these individuals engaged?

I hate cats as you can see.

Preparing a fresh meal of Ecuadorian Chifa(chinese food).

My clean room for fungal cloning and basting turkeys.

Our time in Ecuador is drawing to an end!

cali's last hurrah

In Cali for what is very possibly the last hurrah for my family. I thought Corey and I would end up spending a relatively quiet, down-tempo time here, mostly watching movies and catching up on U.S. politics (an endeavor which ended up disgusting both of us so much that the phrase "ignorance is bliss" is beginning to make a lot more sense to me now). However, we ended up doing what we do best: being quite Busy Little Bees, buzz, buzz, buzzing around, this time (to our relief) in cars, instead of noisy, dirty buses, which made a huge difference in terms of comfort and sanity.

On Tuesday, Corey, my mother, Omar (the family driver/all around handyman and great guy) and I drove to Silvia, a small town in the mountains about 2 hours away in Cali. At the tollbooth, we purchased a yummy, if a bit crazy-looking and strange-tasting fruit called zapote. It peels naturally in that star shape, and you kind of suck on its fruity fuzziness like a toothless baby. One minor example of the amazing variety of fruits in Colombia, most of which are endemic to the country, Julie types in her best business-like guidebook tone.

The Silvia Tuesday market is huge: Indians from surrounding villages come in to sell and buy fruit, vegetables and handicrafts. It is amazingly busy and fills up the entire town: pots and pans, hair ties, chontaduros (a yummy palm nut you eat with salt), plantains... you see folks everywhere in their woolen skirts and hats, not so much "traditional Indian dress" as it is evidence left over from the days of oppressive rule by the Spanish, who forced the indigenous community to dress in such a way in order to mark them as visually obvious Indians. I wonder if people continue to dress like that nowadays as a mark of pride or simply because over the course of time it has become traditional... Anyway, it's interesting to visit a place with such a large and colorful indigenous gathering in Colombia, where such a thing is the exception rather than the norm (as it is in places such as Ecuador's Otavalo).

This bird told my fortune: its owner blew on it, it hopped down to the bottom shelf of the wooden box and landed on a piece of paper, which was then promptly turned over to me as my fortune. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what it said, something about learning to appreciate my luck, I think...? Anyway, it was definitely a first for me. There were a lot of small stalls selling all kinds of interesting herbs, including a dried-up bear claw.

I love hiking around in Silvia, passing the people on horseback, the giant pigs, the chickens rolling in the dust, going over the little bridge...

On Wednesday Corey and I paid a visit to my father's workplace. It was too bad that we weren't able to give my father a little more advance notice about our arrival, because he commented that in an ideal world, he would have loved for Corey to have been able to give a seminar both about his thesis work on Bt corn and about our work in Ecuador. For next time, maybe...? There isn't much in the way of mycorrhizal (let alone mycorenewal) research going on there, but we got to talk with a soil scientist and check out a bean experiment meant to breed drought tolerance. Some of the many beans you see in the photo above are meant to represent drought conditions, others represent irrigated ones (apologies in advance for my faulty scientific terminology!).

This was an especially cool experiment because it wasn't using any fancy genetic work, meaning that they were no bacteria or jellyfish or harpy eagle genes pumped into the beans. Nope, it was good old-fashing plant reproduction. So, it was nice to see that that's still going on.

Another aspect of the bean project concerned aluminum toleranace. Here I begin typing eloquent dictation from Corey: "all plants are affected by aluminum concentration in the soil so they're trying to breed aluminum tolerance because the soils here and in other areas such as Brazil are high in aluminum concentration." Thank you, Corey! The long root in the photo above is the root of a bean that has demonstrated more resistance to aluminum than the short, stubbly root.

We also visited the biotechnology lab, full of impressive glowing white rooms, plants in jars, humming machines and soylent green.

Cultures for yucca, genetically manipulated so that they'll produce betacarotene. Some of them already appeared orange, even at this early stage, frozen in their little plates.

Genetically manipulated yucca plants. Some come out looking weird, others look quite normal. This isn't exactly related, but on the car-ride towards my dad's workplace, I read an interesting article in UK's The Guardian about the effects Bt cotton in India(http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/30/gmcrops.india) which kind of colored my view about the whole genetically modified food business. More on that later, maybe.

This is just a random crazy insect my younger brother found outside by the swimming pool, an example of Colombia's (or more specifically, our back-yard's) insect diversity and all around "whoa!" quality.

On Friday we embarked upon an Epic Pachico Family Adventure, in which we drove two hours to Popoyan, a very pretty colonial city to the south of Cali. Corey and I last knew Popoyan when we flew in to the Popoyan airport from Gorgona: after spending 8 hours in the Guapi airport, waiting for the delayed-from-weather flight, we were deliriously happy to be in Popoyan. This time around, we (thankfully) got to see a little more of the city than the airport lobby.

My parents very kindly treated us to a night in a very nice hotel room, in an old colonial building with a huge courtyard that was once a Franciscan monastery.

Those monks sure did live it up.

Popoyan is full of narrow streets and whitewashed buildings. In fact, everything is so white that when the sun is out and you take a picture everything appears as a white smear, as though an angel or vampire or the creepy girl from "The Ring" or some kind of otherworldly creature darted into your frame and messed up your photo.

That weekend was the Festival de Gastronomia (Gastronomic Festival!) in Popoyan, which meant that there were all kinds of exciting booths set up in the lobby of our hotel and others, with delicious free food ranging from black free-range coffee grown by a women's collective in the region to french fries (advertised under the brand name "McCain"--John, I didn't know you were in the papitas business!) to fried sausages (which I didn't try, because of the mad horde that rushed the booth the second the sausages were ready). My mother was given a free bottle of expensive Chilean olive oil--I guess she must have a nice face.

On Saturday we drove up to Coconuco, a small town famous for its volcano and hot baths. There were a lot of signs in the town for "Yoghurt Natural," so maybe their yoghurt is famous too? We spent a nice day soaking in the baths, getting all prune-wrinkled, and then my parents and Corey and I went for a small hike up a somewhat steep dirt path in front of our hotel, where we got nice views of the surrounding valley and a waterfall.

Corey and my dad discuss manly topics, such as map making, compass directions and geology/geography.

We were lucky enough to glimpse the snow-capped rim of the volcano, the first time I have ever seen snow in Colombia.

Today we drove back from Coconuco and made a brief stop in Popoyan just to explore it a little more one last time. Popoyan is full of these houses with these dramatic courtyards, which you can peep quickly into and admire the fountains and flowers.

The sight of this llama at the park inspired a discussion centered around a very important question: can you ride a llama, if you're not a) a small child or b) a short person from the Andean region and indigenous descent?

I wanted to climb this hill, but Corey said he was too tired. So, instead we got ginger cookies and pandebono (a yummy Colombian bread pastry of which Corey has become very fond), which was just as nice if not nicer.

The one family photo in which there wasn't at least one person making a silly monkey face.

One of the things I was thinking about on our first day in Colombia, in the back of the car with Omar driving and Corey in the front seat, returning from a trip to the mall to get Corey some contacts (yes, one of the first things we did after arriving in a rarely-visited foreign countrywas go to the mall), was that Cali is really just any other city after all. It took me living for a significant period of time in another South American city (a bigger, dirtier one) to get rid of Cali’s symbolic baggage. Quito has the same “pueblo town”quality as Cali—-a significant lack of throbbing, underground culture, the kind that produces yoga classes or art in the streets, the feel that I imagine that Buenos Aires or Bogota might have. Thinking of Cali this way (as similar to other places, as opposed to this wholly unique, unreplaceable spot) is a comfort rather than a downer for me… it makes Cali easier to leave, I guess, if it feels like other places, rather than this unique site. Not to say that there are certain things about Colombia and Cali that are and will be to me simplyirreplaceable, but I'm not going to dwell on that right now, for fear of getting sentimental. After all, people move away from their childhood homes all the time. Just because this has been my home base for the past soon to be 23 years (even when my family was living in Virginia and I was living in Portland, Cali was always argubably, without competition, home), doesn’t mean that leaving has to be, I dunno, a big deal. Oh, well.

Also, as a kind of random aside, here are some recent news updates relevant to Ecuador and the mycorenewal project:

This just happenned in Cuyabeno: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/14/content_9288163.htm. I know you read stuff like that in the news every day but it´s different when it actually happens to a place you know. I mean, picture the Willamete and the hooplah that would take place if the spill had happenned there. Makes me sad to see what it looks like, the Aguadulce (Sweetwater) river, when we go back there later this week. Sell your cars, folks.

Also, here is a somewhat hilariously inaccurate (at least to me) article about the mushroom project: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/08/eaecuador208.xml

Mushrooms eat trash!!! No, really!!!!!!

coasting

Look at all those crazy caterpillars! This is the hotel at Playa Escondida, where I last stayed two years ago with the other Ayuda Directa volunteers. It was muy relaxing and pretty but also muy expensive. Ths time around, Corey and I realized we didn´t have enough money with us because we´d lent some to a friend of ours and because I miscounted the amount in the money belt since I am damn good at math like that. We tried fishing for our food and eating only bread and jam that we´d bought at the bus station, but after one successful meal and three non-meals we decided that no beach, no matter how relaxing or pretty, was worth near starvation. Especially because the caterpillars didn't look particularly appetizing.

Anyway, so this post is the long-delayed update of Julie and Corey's most excellent beach adventures! After two weeks in the jungle, Julie needed a little vacation or her little brain was about to explode! So after a nightmarish journey in which we basically traveled across the entire country in, oh, a day, we met up with the Brian and the Jess in Mombiche with the B´s parents, who visited Ecuador for an epic three weeks. Mombiche is a very quiet, sleepy beach town, a decided contrast to Atacames (which we passed through on our way), another beachside city stuffed to the gills with Ecuadorian families on vacation with little kids drinking enormous batidos the size of their heads and the throbbing bass of reggaeton.

Corey's triumphant catch! The one meal that we did have in Playa Escondida was very good, though: Corey caught fish that were either sea bass or sea trout (the google images are misleading) and we ate it on a big bonfire on the beach, wrapped in aluminum foil. Very, very delicious.

The lone fisherman assumes his position.

Gorgeous beach rocks.

We went swimming when the tide was out and kept banging our knees and feet against the rocks.

This was such a comfortable hotel, I'm sorry we had to leave due to monetary troubles. It was a nice one-year-of-knowing-each-other treat for Corey and I, though (the dates nicely coincided).

We hitched a ride to Playa Escondida on the back of a banana truck.

It went memorably fast.

Pretty handmade necklace Corey made me, which I've lost since then. Bummer.

This fish made a noise like a cow!

Corey caught a lot of these catfish, but we kept throwing them back because we didn't think they were good to eat. The laughing old men, incredulous at our silly gringo fish knowledge, informed us otherness. Oh well, one fewer catfish lunch to eat in this lifetime, I guess.

Wiggly little fellows!

Goopy green horse pond, seen on our hike in Mompiche.

I got excited by the pelican formations in the sky.

Mushroom hunting (unsuccessfully) in the tall grass.

Yeah. Birds are exciting.

This tree reminded me of the Lion King.

Fishing for giant weird fish in the lily-pad filled pond.

Corey sneaks a peek into the bat cave, out of which I ran out squeaking in startled fear upon the sight of the little hairy beasties flying around, panicked visions in mind's eye of their little claws tangled in my hair.

Searching for cool stones and shells. We could have spent all day doing this, because we are dorks like that.

Cool fossilized brain-like coral. Fun to look at, not so much fun to walk on (cut, sore feet).

It's Mr. Crab from Spongebob! These little guys were hard to catch. Corey and I mastered a strategy that involved a lot of shouting, sand-kicking and fast movement.

Points for you if you can ID these!

Cool black sand.

A cool bug we found a long the trail. He had a little dingleberry hanging out there for a while.

El Christof, our steadfast beach adventure traveling companion and beloved housemate!

We walked down a long hot trail in search of the black sand beach.

I think Corey said this was a type of milkweed.

I always make an effort to take pictures of the fishing boats for my dad, since I know he likes them. Portugeuse fisherman heritage represent.

OK, Julie, you liked the birds. Jesus.

We hired a boat to take us back from Cojimies, where we stayed for the Corvina Festival on August 9th. Corvina is sea bass. Long live the sea bass! Anyway, the boat took us by lots of mangrove forests. It was nice to see that they hadn't all been completely devastated (yet) for the production of cheap frozen shrimp in glowing supermarker aisles.

Our chill Capitan, encapsulating the motto of coastal living: reeeelaaaaaaxxxx.

We had a delicious lunch with the leftover shrimp we used as bait.

I was told repeatedly not to step on the darker fish, as it apparently had poisonous spines.

Corey gestures excitedly. The thrill of the hunt.

This is the BIGGEST COCKROACH I HAVE EVER SEEN (and I've seen a lot of them), smashed by my shoe in a fit of un-trademark Braveheart bravery and brutality in our little beach hut in Cojimies. For an idea of scale, that is an Ecuadorean 5-cent piece (the same size as the U.S. nickel.

Long live the sea bass! It was party time for Julie and Corey, as in we stayed up late until 12.30am instead of our usual 8.30-9pm bed time. We are such wild kids! There was a cool salsa band and lots of friendly sketchy drunk guys, and, of course, no sea bass festival is complete without the scantily dressed ladies shaking it onstage by a giant inflated hot-air bottle of alcohol.

This soup, complete with a whole lobster, langostinos, and a squishy queen conch piece, was purchased for the most excellent price of $3, much to the delight of our pockets and bellies.

I felt sad that I am too old to go down these kinds of slides.

Jess devours a coconut.

The withered old guy in the corner of this photo was cool.

Our time in Mompiche was all about the laziness: I read a book I really should have read for my thesis, Corey drank beer and talked with little old men on plastic white seaside beach chairs about fishing (said conversation involved a fair share of hand gesturing). And, of course, there were sunsets.

And coconuts on heads.

I wouldn't be a young white girl if I didn't take a picture of my feet.

Corey forages.

I'd never seen this kind of sand dollar before.

Are you tired of sunset pictures yet?

In more recent, relevant updates:

- Corey and I have been in Colombia since September 1st, visiting la familia for what is more than likely my very last Cali hurrah before Portlandia becomes everyone's permanent address. We are enjoying having some time to relax (or catch up on job and fellowship applications, in my case)

- Today is my birthday! There goes another year. If the next one brings plenty of mushrooms and traveling, like this past one, I'll be pretty happy.