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).