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.

Lago Doings

Lago Agrio reminds me a lot of Tijuana, in the sense that it´s the kind of town that a lot of people pass through, but never really stop to visit, or think about the people who actually live here all the time, as opposed to just move through it. It has very Wild West feel to it... the Colombian bakeries and hoochie clothing shops... the Nightclubs and Discotecas with copyright-violation cartoon characters as their logos... the sun that starts burning my shoulders to a crisp if I ever stand out in it for more than half a minute without sunscreen. I really enjoy the feeling of getting to know the city: knowing where to get the good 1 dollar batidos as big as your head, where to find air conditioned internet cafes, the lonely vegeterian resteraunt. It´s slowly but surely become my favorite place in Ecuador. It just feels warm and good and familiar, while much of Quito still has the big-city feel to me: I much prefer our little loveshack in Guapulo, huddled up against the enormous green hills dotted with eucalptus trees.

We´ve been here since late Tuesday night, involved in the inoculation of mycelium at the different experiment sites. It took all day on Tuesday to drive here, since the bridge near Papallacta was closed until 4pm, making our 5am wake-up time decidedly unnecesarry. Day 1 involved the funnest stuff, namely Brian wading out in the middle of Charapa (one of the oldest contamination sites, at 30-something years old) on a perilous bridge made of thin bamboo sticks and scooping up gooey, sticky oil into a bucket. Then we got to take the oil back to our central base (Donald´s house, who has generously offered his land as space for the project) and do the extremely fun task of pushing oil through a filtering net, in order to get the asphalt and rocks out. After a certain amount of time, the surgeon masks had to be busted out to avoid fume-induced headaches. We all agreed that anyone who wants to own a car should be forced to do a day or two of cleaning up spill sites and dealing with crude or 30-year old oil with their bare hands.

Day 2 involved less sticky oil handslegsclothes and a bit more brute labor. I carried sacks of old sawdust away from the experimental site pits and dumped them under a nearby tree to turn into mulch. We had to be careful not to dig up the layer of petroleum in the pits, as we didn´t want to be dumping oil-contaminated soil on Donald´s land! I reflected that for the past three summers now, my job or volunteer position has always inevitably involved some element of manual labor.

Yesterday we learned the art of making ¨burritos,¨ or a method of wrapping up the mycelium in cardboard to make them especially hungry and happy about growing and hunting for oil. We got to make a human chain while tossing the bags of mycelium (which to me look weirdly reminiscent of crushed, smashed Frosted Flakes) from the storage room into the car and then from the car to the pit site. It was like basketball practice all over again, as I huffed and heaved and tried not to smash Brian´s face as I hurled bag after bag of mycelium at him, trying to keep up with Corey´s tosses.

To celebrate getting done what we worried might be ten days worth of work in a mere three, we went out for some very important business: the drinking of chichi cara, which I am almost certainly spelling wrong. The adjectives used to describe this local beverage throughout the night and the blurry-eyed next morning included ¨bile from the Devil´s steaming entrails,¨ ¨butthole juice,¨ and ¨nasty schtuff.¨ Think aguardiente-flavored paint thinner. After the bar closed, we were invited to go to a salsa club by a group of large black men from Esmeraldas, and we ended up riding in the back of their very nice truck, after being poured more chichicara into plastic cups from one of the men, who carried the liquor around in what looked like a giant empty plastic bottle of cooking oil. Much salsa dancing and dance floor spinning madness ensued, including me frequently getting hit in the back of the head by the tiny beads on the end of the braids of the dreadlocked girl Brian was twirling enthusiastically around, and learning that one of our generous hosts was the owner of the brothel that we drive by every day to get to Donald´s h0use, the one with the cheesy mural with Avril Lavigne on it. This morning Corey asked me, ¨did we get invited to a salsa club by the owner of a brothel last night?¨, and I replied in the affirmative.

Today has been somewhat of a day off (Sunday is the day of rest, after all), as we all nurse our chuchakis (slang for hangover) and drink our cold batidos. This afternoon we stop by at Donald´s house for a final clean up, and then hopefully tomorrow or the day after we may get to go on another Toxic Tour to look for mushrooms at different contaminated sites and hopefully clone them in the little portable laboratory Corey and Chris built (think small greenhouse with plastic walls and tubes for a frame--it rocks, apart from tending to get very hot).

Brian and Corey have big plans for continuing the experiment back in Quito: the phrases they throw around in such conversations often involve ¨open-mouthed jars¨ and ¨small scale.¨ I have some pictures I intend on posting soon, including some of Lago I plan to steal from Jess, as well as some from our brief 6-day vacation in the coast a while back, including the famed Corvina (sea bass) festival, famed mostly in Cojimies, where it takes place.

In other important news, we now may possibly own a kitten, which Brian rescued from underneath a car last night. Brian lay in a puddle while I shone the little flashlight on the stranger´s cellphone I borrowed until I saw her, pulled her tail and Brian grabbed her. She has enormous bat-like ears, wide suspicious eyes and an extremely feral nature. I hope we get to keep her forever and ever.

Mushroom ID project on the Rio Shiripuno in Huaorani Territory

Whether one believes in rebirth

or not

and whether one believes in religion

or not

there isn´t anyone who doesn´t appreciate

kindness and compassion.

Dalai Lamai

I try to live by this quote...

I discovered this quote after the irresponsible and untimely death

of my wonderful, kind and loving younger brother David J Guidry.

He was one of the most honorable and kind people you could ever meet

if you treated him and the people around him with kindness your cup would

overflow. Not in the material sense.

I think about him most everyday and miss him dearly, I´m crying as I write this 4 weeks from his birthday and almost 2 years after that tragic evening.

I know this will probably make my mom cry, but I had to send out some positive energy in his name.

Now for some fungi....

Coprinus dessiminatus
Hygrocybe miniata
A tiny bagre´ I caught. There are billions of fish in in this damn river and you would think I was a fish leper.
Look at his fat catfish(bagre) belly.
The Yasuni sunset


I went to Yasuni National Park to do some mushroom ID stuff and make a poster with some interesting mushrooms you might see on the trails. Julie talked to the owner of Shiripuno lodge about my mushroom geekdom so they paid my basic expenses and gave me room and board for 5 days. Basically I was hanging out in th jungle going along on the tours. The tourists can really wear you out especially when they complain. The French people were nice but they DO NOT BELONG IN THE FOREST. I mean that. I can say that a hot shower is nice though...I don´t really shower that often. I would be considered disgusting by most western standards. I consider most western standards disgusting anyway. I like being stinky.

I can also say I´d like a good game of 1-2 no limit texas hold em.

I´m not a good journalist. I´m better at laking about these things than writing

Ok a poem I guess

When we stand alone
in woody stands far
from any place,
we can wonder why people
are so cruel.

Why must we destroy everything
for a coca cola, a candy bar, a barrel of diesel.
This place in which I stand
only stands due to
The People (The Huaorani) (Wow-ranny)
they refer to us as cannibals
we definately are willing to consome everything
including ourselves.
Do you really own the things you have?

We´ve called them savages
but they knew more about everything
then we know about
anything.

texaco,repsol,mobil, conaco,shell...etc
and all the little unimportant idiots
that run the money machines
go fuck yourselves.

I think I believe in karma.
I´m not a christian
or evangelist.
Let the world and true human culture thrive or.
Death. or.
Death and rebirth. and.
I just can´t believe you burn for eternity for not
believing
in some superstition.
you should believe something because
it helps you spread kindness and
understanding. The age of doctrine and dogma is dead.
The boat will sink.

thank you.





Hairy cucina
Ganoderma Applanatum

Jelly tooth
Pluerotus ostreatus Lepiota species(green spored buddy)