Elementalidad

The exit polls of the September 28th election showed a wide margin of support for approval of the new Ecuadorian constitution, in what President Rafael Correa claimed as an “historic victory”.  There are indeed a handful of interesting chapters of the constitution that not only reform Ecuadorian’s state institutions and personal rights, but also rights for nature to run its course.  There are clauses for State supported programs to deter human exploitation of non-renewable resources, destruction of ecosystems, and giving explicit rights to nature for an “integral restoration”.  It also states that any person can demand to any governmental agency that these rights be upheld, and may be arbitrated in a court of law.

Fellow expat Gary Scott has an intriguing article about investing in the excellent beach area known as Bahia, just north of huge port town of Manta.

Unfortunately, AFAIK right now Bahia is pretty much the farthest beach area to reach in Ecuador from Cuenca. It should be soon remedied when neighboring Manta gets improved airport connections…. but untill then, it takes two flights from Cuenca to Manta and the peak travel time (aka weekend flights) cannot really be considered “connecting” flights in that you have to stay overnight in Guayaquil or Quito. A drive to Bahia by private car is about 7-10 hours depending on roads and traffic, add a few hours if going by bus. For fellow North Carolinians, its analogous to driving to The Outer Banks from Asheville along HWY 64 in 1960.

That being said, Bahia ROCKS! Its clean, calm and picture perfect. Its the first coastal city thats more or less “environmentally aware” lots of sustainable horticulture, agriculture, and other ecolodge / projects going on in that region. Across the bay in neighboring and burgeoning Canoa, the surf and sun is right for a tranquil getaway that’s hip with the backpackers and surfer crowd. Its much more downtempo than Montañita to the south.

I hope the purported growth of Manta doesn’t pollute the environment in the Bahia de Caraquez …. but its almost inevitable.

For fun today I learned how to run a bash script from PHP, and implemented everybody’s favorite command line utility: fortune! The script takes advantage of php’s exec() command, and ended up looking something like this:

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<?php
exec ("/opt/local/bin/fortune -s", $lines_of_output, $error_code);
if (!$error_code) {
	foreach ($lines_of_output as $line) {
		print $line."\n";
	}
} else {
	print "script failed with exit code $error_code, see http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/exitcodes.html";
}

Check out the two beta versions I’ve created here (Hit refresh in your browser to get a new fortune).

• Your daily online fortune cookie.


• Steven Wright aphorisms.

These are meant to be part of a larger project intended to expose these quotes via RSS to incorporate them into some dynamically created “signature” lines, which is part of some new Gmail functionality available from Google Labs.

Living as an uninformed expat for the past two years, the American media hype (dross, drivel, spin, or whatever your personal flavor of the day may be) typically arrives months or sometime years late—if it arrives at all.  Today, however began with a pleasant and rather timely headline. Former US Vice President, Al Gore, has won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. This is a great day for our planet, and could prove to be an essential turning point, if Gore can channel this latest success in a meaningful way. He’s already promised to donate his share of the prize to the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection.

I have to admit that the original hype arrived to me and Ecuador a bit late about Gore’s acclaimed film on climate change.  I only recently was provided the opportunity to watch an english version of the film that a house guest bestowed upon me. Special thanks goes out to Brian at the Landever Foundation, who passed through Cuenca in the closing phases of his year-and-a-half-long mission to travel, research, and volunteer his way through central and South America, leaving an aire of consciousness (cultural, political, and otherwise) in his wake.

Brian is in the research and development phase of his Landever Foundation,and I’ve pledged to help get his non-profit off the ground by designing and maintaining his website.  The main function of the organization is to provide the necessary circumstances for healthy inter-cultural exchange experiences to kid in the States, with the lofty goals of opening young minds to the notions of cultural identity, respect, and interracial teamwork and dynamics.

On a sunny Ecuadorian morning a few days ago, I awoke with something funny in my head. From the depths of the warm cocoon that is my alpaca blanket, I jotted down on the nearest sheet of paper a few lines of haiku that flowed out without much forethought. Funny how Zen just happens to disappear and reappear in my life with surprising spontaneity. Mind you this doest happen very often, but perhaps it was brought on by a recent bout of meditation in combination with some independent research I’ve been getting more and more involved with along the lines of self-knowledge. Perhaps a simple occurrence of Syncronicity more than anything else.

:: chameleon
climate fluctuates-
little color changer waits
basking on a stone

Continuing with a series I’m calling SAGEFAQ this entry addresses frequently asked questions about getting around in Ecuador.

1. In general, how is bus travel in Ecuador?
2. Do Ecuadorians travel with livestock on buses?
3. What is the lechero?
4. How can I avoid the lechero?
5. What are the travel times between the major terminals in Ecuador?
6. Night bus versus day bus for long distances?

1. The Quito bus terminal… logistic Read the rest of this entry »

Part One of my series on SAGEFAQ tries to help solve your money problems… no, we’re not giving away free money

Money Issues, a.k.a ”$end mon€¥ ₦ow, Mom!”

1. How do I carry around my money?
2. Should I take traveler cheques with me?
3. Are Visa, MasterCard useful and are ATMs available in South America?

1. Debit Versus Credit? Read the rest of this entry »

Being one of few (active) members of the HospitalityClub.org and CouchSurfing.com living in Cuenca, Ecuador, I have the really nice opportunity to be contacted by lots of people traveling through ecuador. On my profiles, I advertise my willingness to help people with any questions they have. I’ve been receiving travel questions for quite a few months now and always try to be as detailed as possible in my responses, and so decided to start logging them here on my blog for posterity and to be able to refer people to view my views on my website, given that providing a link, albeit not heartwarming as a personal response, is 1000 times more useful and efficient that responding with the same answer twice.

[ my HospitalityClub profile ] [ my CouchSurfing profile ]

So here comes a series called “SAGE FAQ” or South America, the Galapagos and Ecuador Frequently Asked Questions. Topics being updating over the next week few weeks include:

Money Issues tips on traveling with cash, traveler cheques, ATM/Debit & Credit Cards in South America and Ecuador.

Ecuador by Bus tips on how to make the most of Ecuador’s transportation system; logistics and tips for avoiding the infamous lechero.

Galapagos Islands how to experience evolution and pure nature on a budget.

Host Families some people come to South America (and Quito or Cuenca Ecuador, in particular) to study Spanish or Portuguese (in Brazil). Its a good idea to bring a token of hospitality to their host families. Here is an outline of tips for choosing a gift. coming soon…

Guided Excursions Helps you choose whether or not you need a I need a guide to summit a volcano, do a National Park trek, visit the Amazon, et cetera. coming soon…

SA Geography an outline of the typical Ecuador travel route, a.k.a the Ecuadorian stretch of “The Gringo Trail”, as well as some lesser-known out-of-the-way travel gems. coming soon…

Statistics How about some Ecuadorian superlatives? The highest volcano, the farthest point on earth you can stand away from the nucleus of this planet, etc.

Senryū is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction but tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature. Senryu are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are serious.

tilled Andean hillside
under alpaca yarns
all of Ecuador shivers

I just arrived in Manaus deep in the middle of the amazon this morning at 4:15 AM a bit battered and beaten by 6 days and nights on a riverboat headed upstream from the delta into the interior. sleeping in hammock on the crowded boat was not very comforable at all, and the bathrooms were fairly substandard, but what the boat lacked in quality and efficiency was made up for ten times over by the unbelievable sensory experience of the Amazon. oppressive heat combined with the afternoon doldrums where there is no breeze to cool you off. Then, taking a shower on the top deck in an incredible torrential rain beating down for 30 minutes. Surreal sunrises and sunsets, not to mention the full moon that just passed over. The end of the dry season means the waters are at their lowest points and the high water mark being a good 30 or 40 feet (10 or 12 meters) above the current point of surface tension.Yesterday reached the dubius climax of the trip when the capitain in a fit of pure brazilian logic, spite, anger (whatever you want to call it), just couldnt wait another minute for me to get back to the bottom of the dock along its incredibly steep and precarious bridge… [in stead of arriving in Manaus at 4:17 AM] decided he would leave me stranded behind during a minor express mission to find a bottle of water in a tiny amazon village. The story from folks on board coraborates my suspicion that capitan did indeed blow the “warning” horn twice as they were throwing the moors from the dock imediately without the customary 2 or three minute wait. Some brazilians and other travelers I had befriended on the boat begged him to wait for me, but he only yelled at them to go away and threatened to throw one nice girl who was sticking up for me in the water! So i had a bit of a drama act to run down the riverbank to hire a small motorized canoe to chase down the big boat that was over kilometer away! Everyone on board was watching the events unfold from the three decks of the riverboat. It was a great moment of intense drama for many of the passengers whose only other exposure to that kind of action on the trip was the daily dosage of evening novelas (brazilian soap operas) piped in by a ginormous satelite dish on the top deck. Throughout the trip, I became hugely popular on the boat and had conversations with everyone, met some interesting locals and a few other travelers and overall had a pleasant time getting to know the amazon bugs from the sweaty confines of my hammock.