Cristina, hasta cuando te quedas en Ecuador?

...was the question i kept hearing on the salsa dancefloor.
To finish off with Peru: the mini buses, which function as blackmarket transport. We caught several of them, and in one of them, fit to seat 15 midgets including the driver, actually squeezed in 23, 4 of us sitting in that little space behind the driver facing the audience and when we thought how could they fit all this in, these shoved in another 4 blokes who hunched standing. The difference between a $1 fare to one 7 or 10 times as much - and who doesn´t know me as cheapskate. Oh, and another delight i tasted was anticuchos which is pieces of beef heart on a scewer, barbequed and served with corn, followed by picarones (donuts with syrup) - delicious! And the cebiche... yes Chile makes great cebiche but that´s not to say it isn´t spectacular in Peru. Cebiche is seafood or fish, raw but cooked by the acid of lemon juice and salt, mixed with onions or purple olive paste, or chilli paste... god it was good.

So we arrive in Ecuador 17 January in the city of Cuenca. A pretty colonial town with an awsome museum, half of which is dedicated to the ethnographic study of the country. The best bit i have to say was seeing the shrunken heads - yes that´s right. One of the practices of the (iforgottheirname)peoples who still live in the Amazon jungle was to cut of the heads their enemy, clean out and remove everything from inside the head, then boil it in specially selected hearbs which preserve it and srink it, sew up orifices and then let it out to dry, of course. It´s really wierd, shunken heads the size or a bit bigger than your fist with long hair and all.

Stayed there a few days and took a day trip to visit a few villages nearby, Gualaceo, Chordeleg and Sigsig. In Gualaceo we had a chat with an old women sitting in the park and making straw hats, but we couldn´t take her picture because whe was afraid her photo might end up in the wrong hands and she´d get bewitched or something horribly similar. Chordoleg is famous for it´s jewellery, gold and silver, so we went nuts for a few hours. But i had to get my arse to Sigsig cos they´re famous for making hats and i wanted one! Got there on a saturday thinking market day would be huge for that but instead we found a little festival in the town square with performances and giggling girls in big red skirts and 5 or 6 whole roasted pigs being sold in makeshift restaurants along the side of the street. I lucked out with the hat market but after roaming around the village for a while, up and down hills, i made do and found something that would protect my porcelain features...

Folks seem to sell anything they get their hands on. I passed a corner store that not only sold furniture but also paper cups and plates and other cutlery, sandwiches and shewing-gum, notebooks, hats and T-shirts etc, but just a few of each. Or is the blue glowing stereo under the seat of the driver of a horse drawn cart weirder? But how about these bananas here! I´ve never been a fan of bananas other than their plain fruit form, but there are these huge green ones which you just can´t eat raw and there cooked in a variety of delectable ways. They can be barbequed and served with main meals - especially on rice, or thinly sliced and fried just like potatoe chips with salt, or otherwise with a bit of sugar, mmmm.

They road north to Riobamba we took by train, well, one old bus on train tracks literally. But there is a side trip which we took around the nearby mountains on the same "train" were we got to sit on top of it like looneys to get a good view and to touch the clouds floating around us. Our one-carriage train had to stop several times to measure the width of the tracks, make sure it was ok, as well as to scrape the fresh carcas of just run over dog.

We get on buses galore: Riobamba to Latacunga, get on a local ute in Zumbahue to arrive to beautiful Lake Quilotoa. The 10-house village, at about 4000m above sealevel, hasn´t got much more than rudementary lodgings for freaks who like to hike around the rim of an extinct (as of 300 years ago) volcano, in which lies a lake. Pretty as a picture but i sure as hell didn´t trek around it for 6 hours. I decided i´d just go down to the shores and up again.

23rd January and we´re in Quito and i´m still getting used to using US dollars. A plethora of churches and cathedrals and another massive and important colonial centre. So what do i do? Go to a SALSOTECA of course. Yes, salsa venue and Rosana is in heaven dancing away. I was shy at first but hell, boys kept asking me to dance and etiquette tells you to accept, so wiggled my hips i did. Today i went to the centre of the world, 0´ latitude. I weighed 1kg lighter on the line and saw water swirl in oposite directions on the north and southern sides of it - very interesting.

Heard of the ecuatorian artist called Oswaldo Guayasamin (1919-1999)? Went to his museum and discovered a artistic genius interested in social justice, also a buddy of Fidel. Awestruck i was, and took endless amounts of pictures of his work. Check him out.

I´m leaving Quito tomorrow and should be crossing the border into Columbia within days. Wish me luck.

A sad day for Ecuador

Yesterday the news reported the accidental death, or unofficial assassination, of the only female minister in parliament in Quito, the minister of defense, Guadalupe Larriba. She and her 17 year old daughter, together with several other military personnel, were all killed in an military excercise involving 2 helicopters near the pacific coast, very near the controversial US military bases.

Barely 2 weeks had passed since she had announced that there would be investigations into the deaths and missing persons during the period when Leon Febre Corder presided between 1984-88 and who supported not only the US bases but also the petroleum companies who installed themselves in the Amazon. There they entered without consultating the indigenous populations, obviously polluting without repercussions, taking 60 per cent of profits out of the country (the rest going to the government), and where a court case continues to this day regarding the companies legitimacy in the region.

Jaime Roldós Alguilera was the president in 1981 who following the wishes Ecuadorians promised to unconditionally remove US bases from Ecuador. He too died with his wife in a "plane accident" soon after his proclamation.

Was this type of terrorist activity making news in your part of the world?

Lima, what a suprise...

After having a mouthful of one of the most visited places around - Cuzco - i made a bee-line for Lima. Why another big city? because my mate Luciana, who i know from BA cos she´s studying there and working for an NGO no less in the south of argentina, is back visiting her family and stuff and i just want to hang out with her and do absolutely nothing, other than decide my future bus trajectory. I arrive there and leave a message for her, and when she gets back to me i tells her: i want to see you, son`t need to do anything, no city tours no museums no nuffing. Sweet with her cos she´s got better things to do than city tours, like catch up with her wonderful and extensive family, finish a report for work while i did my much needed vegetating, visit her lecturers at university where i get to sit in group tutorials, see her friends play live at a jazz venue, go to the local pub, and yep, there i am tagging along like a little lamb everywhere she goes. I even took notes on how a loving family actually works - never too late to learn. I settled in just fine, but thank goddess for the little spanish i know. Not to boast, but there was no single foreigner where i went ...ok, maybe that is boasting. This is exactly what i was looking for and this makes it all worthwhile. And the city itself, well i did stick to the nicer middleclass neighbourhoods, and sometimes it even reminded me of melbourne, except the shorline in melbourne hasn`t got a 100m or so drop.

Alas! i had to leave and head for Trujillo, a seaside town in northern Peru highly recommended by Luciana for it`s newly descovered history. And who sits next to me but a PhD archeology student with an amazing passion for her country`s ancient history, and who didn`t stop short of writing notes for me of all the ancient civilazations that roamed the north of Perù (which is the zone i had to restrict her to). Trujillo and the surrounding areas are full of pre-Columbian ruins of ancient civilizations which rival the renowned Incas and who preempted their development and success, of the Incas that is, until the Spanish of course. Absolutely incredible and any archeologist dream and not to mention a novice`s like me, dating from 10,000bc to 1470ad, where conquering groups built ontop of the defeated and so, can you imagine what lies under metres of sand? Layers and layers of life! I`ve seen elaborate and massive ceremonial grounds and palaces, exceptional royal tombs - El señor de Sipan from the Chimù, loads of pyramids built by the Tucume, inticate and fascinating wall carvings and pantings. In one site one wall had carvings of fish winding up along the whole wall, why? El Niño - the massive tidal waves that came in and flushed whole cities, yet wouldn`t quite wipe them out because they lived to tell the story. (take note Paco you`d be interested if you`re not already ahead of me there)

Anyway, 3 days of hardcore archeological exploring and museum visiting made me and my newly found columbian travelling companion, Rosana, head for Mancora, a lazy beach village, setting the scene for bikini sunburn and jewellery shopping off the streets from artisans. It just so happens that she´s living in Buenos Aires too, studying, and had done more or less the same treck from there, heading to Bogotà to spend time with family during summer break. Exactly my root. But once again, my travel buddy gets a hard time by immigration - border of Peru and Ecuador, the Ecuadorians - her neighbours - won`t let her through without a police check. Lucky she was prepared but still aghast and broken by the third degree treatement. Me? no problems again, not unless i`m crossing into Estonia or Slovenia, and even then it`s not so bad compared to Diane´s frisking.

Still in Lima, but on my way to Paradise

I was rudely awakened on my bus ride by an anouncement that told passangers that we were going to be given a crummy breakfast, and they were gong to give me a watered down instant coffee that i would almost finish until i saw a little ant floating inside. "There´s an ant in my coffee" i complained. Hmm, "would you like another one Miss?". Let´s just say that was 3 days ago and i´m still ok. But the rest of my trip till i reached Lima looked weird from my window, misty and foggy i couldn´t see a thing, and this went on for 3-4 hours.

Lima is meant to be my chill out time, didn´t want to see anything or do anything, just make a few plans. Been in a hostel for 2 days already and meant a friendly colombian couple, like all the colombians i know are. I learnt more about colombia and I´ve been thrilled to bits about gong there now. DREAM COME TRUE! (Bolivia can wait). Got people in coffee country, Bogota, Medillin and lots of advice for when i reach the caribbean. I´ll make a stop over in Ecuador and maybe visit a new made friend in Venezuela.

Geez, i later found out that it wasn`t a military march but a bunch of police cadets... still, they were kick arse dancers.

A military parade where marching looks like a dance

Who would have thought Puno would be a happening place. Last night we were going to try new year´s eve all over again cos of all the hickups that we had on the original night. So we started with a bit of garlic bread to line the stomach and beer before going to an small but interesting bar on the little main strip of town. There we bagan to treat ourselves to cocktails. Not that they were particularly strong but at this altitude (3,800m asl) it took me an hour to take down one and by then i was rolling down the aisle. Not to mention there was a little help from Marylane. No need to go to eat, we ordered from the pizza joint across the road and they delivered, sweet. Embarrassingly we made it home before midnight, but in any case it was a rocking good night. Joining us were 3 argentines and a venezuelan who we met on our recent 2day trip to the islands in the lake Titicaca, where we saw floating islands! they were made of reeds but not built on the the bed of the lake so they were anchored, and and in fact there are many small communities who live like this on their floating islands, although the one we were on was specially made for us... But we also visited real islands where we were going to spend the night with a host family seeing no hostels exist on the island, nor electricity despite the wires hanging around the place. Poxy i thought at first and artificial - but in the end that was just me projecting. The folks there are shy, protect their community by giving everyone an equal go at hosting, and therefore earning a buck, they`re happy to have you around even if perhaps a bit confused about what the fuck we were about. So that was Titicaca.

And where have i just come from? Was taking a walk to the main square and saw from a distance crowds and lots of white hankerchiefs being waved in the air. There were tryhard firecracker going off, the kind that are load but at best emit a quick flash of light, sounding like the ones that were being thrown at our feet at new year´s at Cuzco.. anyway. I get closer and i see it`s a military march. Boys are dressed in their best suit and tie, preferably dark otherwise whatever you got your hands on. Girls in suits with knee length skirt and heels, similar looking but not identical by any stretch (shoes that is), and all with the same short hair - short at the back but a little longer on top. So what kind of marching makes for shimmering sweaty faces? a march where you`re jumping around and kicking the tip of your shoe to nose height. They were roughly in line and there was some one at the front of each bunch whistling with his mouth to order his group around. I saw a soldier run off to a street vendor and get himself a drink. They also had the white hankerchiefs in each hand waving them about in sinc. But, as all military parades get, it started to get boring and as i was thinking of going, the crazy parade stopped and so did the drums. It was time for anyone who didn´t get to centre square in time to huddle alone quickly. Then i saw them again, a selected few in the centre going around in ways i can`t explain, in sinc kind of but not quite together. And the singing! One thousand voices singing, something nationalistic no doupt, but somehow in delirium while they jumped from one foot to the next.

Well, now i`m going to find my mate Max from last night who`s from here and has a plan to travel to Brazil by bicycle!
Tomorrow i take the bus to Lima, 18 odd hours i can`t wait! At least i get to see my mate Luciana.