Post referendum, all is quiet

pretty bird, yeah, can you say pretty bird?

The patter of rain, ebbing and flowing, now quiet and still, the hum of insects noticeable, now woooosh, the rain comes again, and all the while thunder rumbles softly and lightening fills the sky.

I love the weather here. It gets hot but always refreshing rain comes, followed by cool breezes. It’s almost always sunny in the mornings, rainy on and off in the afternoon and evening and cloudy and rainy at night.

Yesterday Ecuadorians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution. Here in Puyo, a stage was erected in the plaza. I got there around 10:30, after a late dinner with three guides who were passing through Puyo on their way to Kapawi. At first, the crowd of a few hundred was muted and I felt embarassed for the bands, who were trying hard to get people to dance. I was disappointed, because I wanted it to be like some kind of happy revolution, with people climbing statues and waving flags, cars honking the horns, speeches from the local Che’s, that kind of thing.

But I now think that my first impression was misguided. The people are ecstatic, but they are also prudent and thinking long term. They are thrilled but they don’t see the struggle as being over. They see this as a beginning, not an end.

And so the crowd was full of handshakes and smiles and then bit by bit, as massive cauldrons of a warm alcoholic beverage gradually emptied their contents into stomachs, the night grew more overtly festive. I was the only gringo there, and was treated like a dignitary. A man were ran the “Yes” campaign took me to their offices adjoining the plaza to introduce me to a small group of local politicians and activists, one of whom was extremely cougarish towards me, so much so that I had to blatantly ditch her many times throughout the night.

Outstrecthced hands greeted me all night, usually holding shots of the warm booze, which I graciously accepted. I got really drunk and danced as best I could for hours. It’s really funny how everywhere I’ve ever been in Latin America, the people love to teach me how to dance. Teaching gringos to dance is really among the latins’ favorite activities. And then they tell me how good im doing, that I’m amazing! But I think they are lying, because the next place I go the people insist on teaching me all over again.

party in the plaza

oops - just wacked that guy with a flag...

it's okay...

Thrilled in my official Aerotsentsak polo

Johnnie Walker ad, at my hotel during a storm

R.I.P. Paul Newman

What a hero he was…

I love this quote, on why he started The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a free camp for terminally ill kids:

“I wanted to acknowledge luck; the chance and benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others, who might not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.”
-Paul Newman

So humble. And I love this comment from a message board:

“I met him once at a charity event. I couldn’t speak, quite possibly a first for me. He shook my hand. I smiled and finally uttered, “It is thrilling to meet you.” He looked me right in the eyes and said, “And I feel the same.”

Tonite I had dinner with an Achuar family. There was the father — who is rare among his people in that he speaks a little English and has been to the US — his wife, and three kids — a girl, 14, boy, 5, and girl, 3.

The kids thought I was just hilaaaaarious. I would make faces at them, or maybe little sounds effects or wave or something — and they would burst out laughing. Then, near the end of dinner, after the boy had finished off two large cokes, he discovered my ability to swing him around by the arms and toss him up  in the air and catch him. Once we got going, he would not let me stop. It actually got kinda awkward, because I was really getting tired but as soon as I tossed him up in the air, sometimes with a 180 thrown in for added excitement, he would demand another, and on and on.

I probably throw this boy in the air a good 40 or 50 times before refusing to do it again, which made me feel bad. But luckily by this time the initial sugar high had worn off and, with only raw caffeine to sustain him and half an hour of acrobatics behind him, momentum was pushing towards bedtime. And so he let me go, with promises of more throws next time.

Today on the way to a pizzeria I met two peppy Jehovah’s witnesses from the US, a boy and a girl (man and woman?) about my age. The boy told me cheerfully that he has been here in Puyo “for only two years”. I don’t really know what to make of that.

the final frontier, the literal end of the road: Puyo

Yesterday I rode five hours from Quito with Daniel Koupperman, who is a French-Ecuadorian and the man who led the creation of the Kapawi Ecolodge. Today I went to the little local airport to begin what will probabaly be a three week job: translating the new airplane’s manuals and teaching very basic English so that visitors to Kapawi can be greeted cordially.

Literally no sooner had I been introduced around the offices of Aerotsentsak, the Achuar owned airline, than one of the pilots muttered something about whether I would like to eat something,  and ran off. He came back holding three huge ants with wings. Each was a good inch long. They were alive and very skirmy. He handed one to me and one to Daniel. About where the butt would be, each ant had a large round sack. After the pilot twisted it off and plopped it in his mouth, I did the same, though not nearly as slickly — it was much harder to rip off than you might expect.

It didn’t really taste like anything. The outter shell was crunchy and the innards were a drippy liquid. I gagged a few times and felt grateful not to have had breakfast.

I want to note that the pilot did not have an attitude of “oh look, a gringo, let’s make him eat an ant!” It was not a spectacle. No one but the three of us was there. Instead, I got the sense that he just wanted to give me something special, something that is rare, as a welcome.

I’m staying at a really nice hotel called El Jardin which is right on the edge of town and hence, right on the endge of all of civilization, because after Puyo begins three thousand miles of jungle…

“If youth but knew, if age but could” – Henri Estienne, via Daniel Kouppermann

One week after arrival…

Judging from my blog stats, interest seems to be waning around here. I hit a high of 73 views on September 1st, but have now fallen to a paltry four today, and at least three of those were likely me. I actually don’t really understand how I ever got 73, except that that was the very beginning and I was very excited and kept returning again and again to look at my very own words, there for all to see on the world wide web! I think my mom did the same, so between us we probably accounted for almost 73.

Anyway, in an effort to raise my views and placate my edgy advertisers, who have up to this point insisted on running only invisible ads, I will now tell you a little about what I’ve been up to since I arrived here in Ecuador one week ago today.

Last Wednesday night I went with Bill and Lynne and a few others to an event marking the start of a tourism conference here in Quito. I wasn’t expecting much, but it ended up being one of the most extrvagent and impressive spectacles I’ve ever experienced.

It started at about 8:45 with a parade that we watched from the patio of the Presidential Palace, surrounded by beautiful and distinguished people. For half an hour brightly twirling dancers, animals, costumed kids, fireworks, solemn priests, mythical beasts, black candle bearing crowds, and elaborate masks streamed by.

Viewing the parade from the Presidential Palace

The finale of the parade was when the Virgin Mary, who paraded by atop a platform standing as still as a statue, was lifted up into the sky with a cable, up the the top of a church spire, as lights flashed and fireworks burst in the background.

When the parade finally ended we went to an incredible gold plated church for the official opening of the conference. After the mayor of Quito spoke about all that this city has to offer tourists, the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa took the stage.

I was predisposed to like him because I knew that he had fought to insert rights of nature into the new Ecuadorian constitution, which will hopefully be ratified on September 28th. But seeing him speak astounded me. They guy is seriously charming, and glows with sincere love for the natural, cultural, and racial diversity of this country

My favorite part was at the very end, after he finished his prepared remarks. He put down his papers and, grinning a huge and genuine smile, he said: “We are so happy to have you here. We are simple, unpretentious people, and we welcome you from the bottom of our hearts.” With those words my man crush became official.

el presidente in the church of gold

Pretty much the rest of last week was spent preparing for an event that Pachamama held on Saturday. it was the first ever “Syposium” in Spanish. It’s a program that has been held all over the US and in many countries that is meant to “Awaken the Dreamer” inside of us. Here is a preview from Youtube:

I did the AV for the event.

Before it started, we all made bets on how many people would come. Trying to be optimistic, I made the highest guess: 100. In the end, 157 people showed up. They were rich and poor, indigenous and black and white, from across the extremely polarized political spectrum here in Ecuador. Everything went great and thankfully I didn’t f up the videos, which turned out to be much more complicated a job than i realized.

The syposium really excited lots of people down here and now it will spread as those who came as guests get trained to give it to there own friends and networks.

I have now begun work on some new projects involving the Kapawi ecolodge. Specifically, I am researching how we can use cutting edge soil stabilization technology in order to make the dirt landing strip useable in rainy weather.

I’m also researching energy efficient refridgerators because are completely redoing the solar energy system at the lodge and have found that the fridges are using 80% or so of the total energy.

Finally I’m going to head to Puyo, the small frontier town where the planes that fly to Kapawi are based, sometime next week to work on translations of the manuals with the pilots and engineers, so that they can be ready to use the new plane as soon as it clears customs. I’m also going to be teaching them some rudemenatry english, so they can communicate with the guests.

So yes, lot’s to do here. It is still completely overwhelming, but I’m very happy that I won’t have much time to fret!

We made it

16 stops in 8 countries over 9 days. In about 40 hours of flying time we made it 4,000 something miles. Now I’m in Quito, in a very comfortable hotel. I don’t know what comes next, exactly, but I will keep you updated. My phone works here so give me a call!

Almost to Ecuador!

The black dots show whwere we have landed

Hey everybody, we’ve made it to Cali, Colombia, which means that we have one more leg to Quito. Since the last time I wrote we have stopped in Mexico (four times) El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama. It’s been a blur and I can’t believe it’s almost over. It’s strange, in a way I feel nostalgic for this trip already. I’ll miss the tiny but comfy seat where I have spent so much time listening to pilots and controllers talking over the headset, reading (first Phillip Roth’s American Pastoral, and then John Grisham’s The Firm) napping an absurd amount, and staring out the window at a million miniature landscapes slowly streaming by or pretending to be in another world completely as we pass over clouds. I’ll also miss the cache of life in a private plane, sweeping past the work-a-day-ers in the normal security lines, not even having to stop when my knfe sets the metal detector off, and authoritatively telling the gas man to fill it all the way up. I’ve been unoffically given the job of checking the oil, which is wildly simple yet gives me a great amount of satisfaction and sense of purpose. I have come to feel at home among the routines of the plane, in general. I have developed a sincere respect for air traffic controllers – they have to be so steady, so sure-spoken and clear as they tick off our registrations – “charlie-foxtrot-victor-foxtrot-november” – and instructions and orders and advice on how to avoid bad weather. And amazingly, from what I can tell, they have all seemed, from Canada to Colombia, friendly.

There have been so many situations over the past few days that I could never have imagined. Not all have seemed like moments that I’d want to cherish, but looking back the stress and anguish kinda fade away and everything seems bizarrely funny and even personally beneficial.

We have had three flat tires, all on different wheels. The guess is that we got a bad batch of tubes. Each time it happened though, the cost to fix went down; in Texas: $200, in Mexico: $50, and in El Salvador: $25.

We have dealt with an unending barrage of overly proud, petty little government officials, each intent on demonstrating the full force of his power to us. But after playing bad cop for a bit, they always switch to good cop, our savior.Today, for instance, we were told by a Panamanian official that because we hadn’t called 24 hours ahead to announce our arrival, he would have to seize our plane and we would have to appear at a hearing tomorrow morning. But after our honest pleas and a promise to pay any “fines or fees” required, he said that we could leave for $81.11 and even called ahead to Colombia to make sure that the same thing wouldn’t happen there.

In Mexico, our first Latin American border crossing,  we were greeted on the tarmac by four camoflouged and heavily armed soldiers, who were actually really nice but made us take everything out of the plane. Then a steady stream of officials – health, immigration, plane inspector, each asking some variant of the same same questions – airplane registration, pilot in command’s license, purpose of visit, certificate of airworthiness, passports, flight plan, insurance, and on and on. Then out of a pickup strode the first non-uniformed official, a stocky bald man in jeans and plaid. He told us that he was “the commander of the whole operation” and to come see him when we were done. He got back in his truck and drove literally 75 yards, back to the tiny airport. Later one of his sidekicks found an error in our paperwork and we had to wait 6 hours in the aiport, hoping a fax would arrive from Quito, and then gave up and went to a hotel for the night.

Damn, there’s lots more i want to saw but it’s late here, and we are leaving for the airport at 6:30 because apparently bad weather forms in the mountains around Quito early in the afternoons and so we have to arrive by noon or so. Here are some pictures though.

franitcally calling Ecuador to try to get an insurance document faxed to Mexico, as Danilo waits and hopes

Ships waiting to pass through the Panama Canal

Cali, Colombia

Maybe my favorite picture yet. This is the Colombian drug sniffing dog, being lifted into the plane.

the soldiers approach in Tampico, Mexico

In Texas

We got two legs under the belt today and were just about to begin the third, from Midland, Texas to Brownsville, Texas, when we ran into some nnngine problems. A new part is being shipped in over night and hopefully we will be able to go again tomorrow around noon.

So for now it’s yet another drab hotel, though this one has the distinction of being in the hometown of George and Laura Bush. I saw a fireworks store called “W’s.” The land here is flat and covered in oil pumps, which I find completely otherworldly, with their smooth, steady, unrelenting bobbing, like some noble workhorse. Everyone I’ve come across here is really nice, not overly so but just genuine and kind. The waitress at a seafood restaurant told me that she was allergic to fish and so couldn’t tell me for sure what was good, but then cheerfully walked me through the relatively popularity of every dish on the menu.

Here are some pictures and a little video from before we took of from Grand Junction, Colorado:

lovely clouds

the huge circular fields that dot landscape, sucking up the aquifers

Albuquerque, New Mexico

oil fields in west Texas

Refueling in Albuquerque…

The weather is good so we should be outte here soon — on to Midland, Texas. There was a small incident as we were coming in to land here. Somehow the main Albuquerque aiport had been entered into the gps instead of the small one that we meant to land at. As we got near the runway Mel noticed this and pulled up. Apparently this is a pretty big deal and we could have gotten in major trouble, but I think everything will be fine.