Coastal PeruBuenas noches from the shores of Lake Titticaca. Anand and I met in Lima last Monday and have been on the gringo trail towards Bolivia all week. We cruised Chinatown and the rich neighborhood of MiraFlores in Lima before heading south to Pisco for Pisco Sours and a glimpse of a town that looked like India; then to Paracas for a boat tour of nearby islands to see penguins, Peruvian Boobies, pink flamencos and sea lions; next to Arequipa via Ica and Nazca (we skipped sandboarding down the dunes and highering a miniplane to view the Nazca Lines, but in Arequipa we enjoyed a thriving city with a beautiful monastery and a museum showcasing Juanita, the Ice Maiden mummy discovered on the top of a nearby volcano in 1995); the past couple days were spent traveling with Kathryn and Bastien, two German girls working in Arequipa - we viewed the famous Peruvian condors in Colga Canyon (3 times as deep as the Grand Canyon and the deepest in the world) and had a bit of an adventure hiking 3 hours to a nearby town before relaxing in the local hot springs. Tomorrow we head into Bolivia and try to avoid the blockades that threaten access to and from La Paz these days before making our way back to Peru for the Inca Trail trek in Machu Pichu. Phew! Stories and pictures to come, like the money-grubbing 12 year old girl Gina and her 7 year old brother who each separately negotiated room prices with us in the town of Chivay.
50 Years Too Late
The biggest story coming out of the jungle of Ecuador these days is not about unchartered territory or medicinal plants - it´s petrol. Since the 70´s petrol has surpassed bananas and flowers (you should have seen the stacks of boxes of roses shipping out on mother´s day from loading docks in Quito) as the lead export and economic backbone of the country, and the USA is Ecuador´s #1 customer. The chief question that inevitably arises in my mind is what happens when the oil runs out? I´m not sure how many years that is, but I´ve heard 20-30 years. And the oil companies, whether American or Taiwanese, have not treated the indigenous communities or their land kindly; Texaco´s disastrous oil spill is the subject of a current, massive law suit. The pictures are reminiscent of the Exxon Valdiz spill (animals covered in slick, etc.), but also accompanied by scenes of devastation wrought in the jungle through excessive clearance, logging, and drilling. If you thought you would come to Ecuador and drive 4 hours into the jungle to discover wild animals and unadulterated Amazon waterfalls, you are simply too late. Get your ass back on the PanAmerican and keep going south. Of course the jungle is not gone, it is simply developed. Civilization, in all its glory, has crept in. ¨Authentic¨indiginous life has taken on new meaning - new, modernized forms in all but the most remote reaches of the Ecuadorian Oriente. Tourism increasingly focuss on traveling to established lodges further and further into the depths. Cuyabeno, for example, is an overnight bus ride to reach a northeastern sector near Columbia where it is still possible to catch a glimpse of a puma in the wild.
Gaby and I had a hell of a good time, but only made it to closer, largely populated destinations: Tena, Puyo, and the slightly less runover Misahualli and Cotacocha. Puyo, for example, is roughly 24,000 people, a dirty, cramped city replete with bars, atm machines and smog-filled streets. We were never more than 6 hours outside of Quito.Just about the only nice thing to do in Tena was an island zoo on the river where we played with monkeys, gazed at giantic trees, and viewed various snakes and random creatures like boa-constrictors and tapirs. It appears that most people stay on the river and spend money drinking at shitty clubs all night. Then they go rafting.
The highlight for me was Misahualli a smaller jungle town with thieving monkeys hanging out in the town square (one stole a tourist´s camera from her purse and proceeded to smash it on the ground into smitherenes). You just chill out at restaurants and people watch, then organize small tours in motorized canoes to zoos, animal and cultural museums, indiginous communities, or upriver for days for the more adventurous traveler. Too bad we didn´t have enough time for that. Instead we visited anearby waterfall that was freaking georgeous.
We took a ride to a local Quichua village. There we were greeted by a sea of local children eager to help dock our boat, and of course immediately ushered into the community artisan hut to view and purchase assorted local jewelry and crafts. While most of the townspeople gathered to watch the volleyball game going on in the center, we were treated to an educational demonstration of how chicha is prepared (and how the fermented drink tastes). 
Finally, for a dollar a tribal shaman blessed me for a few minutes. This mostly consisted of blowing cigar smoke in my face repeatedly and with renewed vigor while shaking a bushel of leaves in various directions over my head, often physically striking the top of my head. The little girl who tried on my Oliver Peoples glasses while I was attended to was actually the one who sparked up the spliff for the aging shaman and made sure it stayed lit. She was frighteningly slkilled with a cigar and a lighter. Throughout the process I was skeptical about him making any impact by attempting to suck the poisons and bad energies out of my head, but I would be lying if I did not admit that I felt more clear-headed after the ceremony. Back in town we met a restaurant owner serving some mean burritos who had an amazing story. He had lived in many different countries, including some odd ones like Kuwait and the UAE, but most surprisingly he was a Michigan Alum! Serving burritos and beers in a jungle town in Ecuador¡!
That night we were also lucky enough to be present for the Miss Misahualli pageant at the local highschool outdoor gym. What a bizarre experience! The gym was filled with the entire community (and some local tribespeople) - mostly drinking heavily and smoking in the bleachers - meanwhile, 4 highschool girls took turns parading around a stage in swimsuits, sportsgear, eveningwear, etc. Some parts of the program included costumes and traditional cultural music and dance performances, or just really bad middle-aged men who got up to sing. Basically it felt like a Westland talent show, so naturally I enjoyed myself and we laughed our way back to our private cabana off the plaza after 3 hours of this nonsense (by the way, the girl I wanted lost). 
Cotococha was a resort-hotel-cabanas destination maybe 10 kilometers upriver from Misahualli. Basically it was like a honeymoon destination, grossly overpriced and isolated but freaking georgeous. The only other guest that night was Martin, an entertaining and friendly German we found passed out on a communal couch. He was on his vaation from work as a physical therapist in a Berlin Hospital. Martin was loving Ecuadors jungle but notably upset that he was aloe and had nobody to share it with. Trust me, I know the feeling. He was damn good at guitar, and we sang the night away around an open fire, Martin and Gaby alternating playing songs (I finally got to see Gaby play guitar!)Puyo was a frightening mess of pollution and crowded humanity, and we stayed in the equally frightening Hotel Christian that looked like a whorehouse with neon blue lights and long flowing curtains blowing out of the 3 stories of windows. But it was damn cheap and had a hot shower. Its hard to believe when you are in a big city AND in the middle of the jungle.
Highlight #1 in Puyo was the museum of medicinal plants. There we found a middle-aged American guy from NorCal with a long beard who gave us a tour of his home and private reserve for medicinal plants. He had married a Shuar Indian, a woman who started this project years ago, and they welcomed a community of indiginous Ecuadorians to live on the land in traditional fashion. The place functions both as an interactive museum and a school. The wife is a pro at the plants, and boasts a stellar record of such successes as helping 17 women bear children who had given up on western medicines. We were taken on a hike through the forest to learn about the flora and fauna, their uses, and also to view the construction of authentic Hourani and Shuar community huts and living areas. This plant cures cervical cancer (clinically proven), this one prevents the spread of ganghreen and can prevent the need to amputate, Dragons Blood from a specific tree is a popular treatment for skin problems, other trees provide a reddish substabce for dying the hair and painting the skin, etc. I always wonder why the west does not use more traditional medicine (or maybe big pharm does!). We prefer the efficiency and speed of a pill or surgery, no matter the cost. 
The Hourani, once nomads and famous for their brutal treatment of outsiders that attempt to enter their world, are also known for their equal treatment society structure (women and children are the same as men). All duties are shared in the family hut and nobody heads the household. Outside invaders is a different story - until recently it was customary to simply kill outsiders who tried to make contact or enter the community, like two nuns and a priest slaughtered in the mid-eighties. These evangelical missionaries were all found killed after coming to prosyletize, the priest with 16 spears lodged just in his genitals. Even today, one Hourani tribe refuses to make contact with Ecuadorian authorities and we can only guess at their numbers, etc. The Shuar are known for their mastery of poisons, and many of their activities - cultural, architectural, eating - reflect a healthy paranoia of the threat of assasination by poison. For instance, when a guest arrives at a Shuar home it is customary for the wife to present food that is taste tested in front of everyone including the male head of the household. Like wise, the huts are constructed with weaving so tight that poison darts cannot be shot through. Like the Hourani, the Shuar community also operaes in family units, but is not equal. Whereas each man once had up to 12 wives, 2 is now the norm.
One more thing aout the indiginous: there are some people who argue the slight asian lookto their appearance and characteristics of their langiages are no coincidence. There{s no way I can say how accurate this theory is, but the hypothesis is that the Chinese arrived in South America 14,000 years before Christ. Why else would the Chinese kids in my spanish class be recognizing local Quichua words as identical to their own??
The best part of the medicinal plants tour was the finale, a brief intro to the technology known as the dry (or compost) toilet. This Californian guy literally built an outhouse that will be more environmentally friendly, provide human fertilizer (urine is 80% of the useful fertilizer from animals) and not waste water. But more hilarious he presented us a bucket of his own feces he saved from October 2005, to demonstrate how shockingly small the amount was and how it decays over time. Wow! we exclaimed to eachother as the group stared at an old man´s poop.
Never Known to Hold the Microphone
Highlight #2 in Puyo was the karaoke bar. Since I lost the bet with Gaby over which girl would win the beauty pageant in Misahualli, my punishment was to sing for her. My friends back home love to get drunk and go sing in Adams Morgan, but I never joined. And so my first time was in Puyo, Ecuador, in a jungle town. I sang some Eagles, Rolling Stones, and Bryan Adams while Gaby laughed. Of course when it was her turn the whole place was treated to a little show and every dude in the bar gave the thumbs up. 
Finally, before finishing our jungle tour, highlight #3 occurred right before sprinting for the overnight bus home to Quito and reality. Gaby and I crashed a highschool dance in another outdoor gym full of townspeople salsa dancing and drinking in the stands again. It may sound lame, but these events are what{s going on in jungle towns! and draw people from all over. Anyway, we arrived to a busy dance floor that quieted down. I dragged Gaby out to center court when the floor cleared for a slow song, and to her horror the DJ started talking to the crowd about how beautiful young love is. Than the salsa returned and we tore it up for a while. The Southern Coast
My memory of my most recent trip to Ecuadors southern coast - Guayacil, Salinas, and Montañita - is largely clowded by the more vivid and striking memory of sweating profusely on sleepless overnight buses to get their and back. No matter, it was well worth the trip. But I think we{ll drive next time... 
In Guayacil we strolled along the Malecon (brand new multimillion $ boardwalk on the river) and stumbled upon an early morning t.v. show filming with famous singer/performers and a rabid crowd. They had been jostling for position on the pier since 4am that morning to get in and be first; we had simply strolled past security on the boardwalk by accident and ended up in the front of the line with our bags following our all-night busride that arrived at 7am.
Guayacil is a cool city but has a limited amount to offer for the passer-through, so we didnt stay over. We hiked up to the famus Santa Ana and El Carmen walkway to an historic canon fort that once protected the city from pirates. In the coastal heat we carried our bags through the city streets, stopping to people watch on various benches, and hang out in the iguana city park. It was quite hot - luckily local entrepreneurs walk around with 2-liter bottles of coke and sprite and pour you a plastic cup full for 10 cents a hit. 
Theres a strange phenomenon with Ecuadorian beaches: as they develop they become obsessed with mimicking Miami. We crashed in Salinas after Guayacil on a beach strip with oceanfront restaurants and watersports, but it was ugly and crowded with the usual strolling beach venders. I love a cold beer on the beach for a dollar, but if you cant even see the water through the stream of jewelry, henna, and food salesmen in your face than it is clearly time to move on.
Our final day, which actually turned into 3 more days and a pre-dawn Tuesday morning return to Quito, was spent in the backpackers paradise of Montañita. Its truly a surfers paraiso, not too crowded except on huge holidays, and the kind of place where you lose track of time (I still dont wear a watch either). Montañita reminded me of Thailand. 
For example,
For example, Gaby and I had cocktails by the water after strolling the beach and wandered into a free night club on the sand to dance. Before we knew it, it was 6am and we stumbled back to our hostel to fall asleep to the crowing of the morning roosters.
Theres so much more to tell of daily life, but no time to write! Mami Loli´s 90th birthday party, Lucas´s 3rd birthday party with the puppeteer who wanted to give me an open-mouthed kiss with tongue, the dog attack in the park, my injuries from jumping through a fountain in GringoLandia in front of all the people at the restaurants, the amazing guitarist David´s little concert with Klesmer and Chava Nagila and gypsy rock, Gaby´s connections at the Quito opera, a little spontaneous trip to a hacienda near Cotapaxi where we had just enough money to cover the bill with pocos sueltos to spare and had to pull the bed up to the fireplace to stay warm, and of course the end of classes :( I´m proud to report a 49/50 for the second semester. Chao for now chicos.
