South America: La Selva, Ecuador & "The" Lizard
We arrived back in Quito at about 6:30 this morning and were back a sleep by 7:00 in our hotel. We got up and have been "walking" errands since about 11:00. Over to the bus station for two tickets to Cuenca - bus leaves at 6:00 am tomorrow and is a 10+ hour trip and each ticket was $12 so the trip will cost us $24, to the laundry -- $4 for 10 pounds of clothes, buy some water, a couple of meals - lunch and breakfast so far and looking for a specific English Spanish Dictonary that Nancy´s teacher in La Selva recommended. And now it is time to catch up on emails.
Second night in our jungle hut about 3 minutes before lights out (10:00 pm & the generator is turned off) Nancy lets out a very small scream -- she says a foot long lizard just fell from the rafters on to the floor. I said, "sure". Two minutes later I hear a significant thud and Nancy says the lizard just fell again. Based on the sound of the second fall I have no doubts it was a foot or more in lenght and 4 or more inches around. The dining halls has a couple of pet taranula spiders for the tourist to play with in the evening and a big green parrot who answers: Roberto and bien to ¿Que llamos es? and ¿Como esta usted?
Do you speak Spanish or are you taking Spanish in School?
We spend most our time in La Selva studing Spanish but did do one 4 hour day tour and a 1.5 hour night tour. Identified better than 15 birds without going out specifically to see birds.
The bus trip to and from La Selva wasn´t as bad as we thought it might be. About 10 hours in duration going an average of 25 miles per hour, 70% of the road is unpaved, bridges are mostly one lane with steel plate, we did cross at least one stream each way (I was awake at the time) with no bridge, watched Disney´s "White Fang II" in Spanish on the way to and "Terminator III" in English with Spanish subtitles on the way back. Due to the road you are bounced and due to the roads the bus is always in a low gear and therefore loud. For some reason last night both Nancy and I woke up about the same time, probably the bus driver´s horn is what woke us. He was chasing a horse and a mule down the road. The bus followed the horse for about 50 yards and the horse found an opening in the jungle and got off the road but the mule must have run down the road with the bus right behind honking for 3 or 400 yards. Sleep is good on the bus -- you don´t see what you are driving on, how narrow the road is, what is coming at you, or how bad the visiblity is due to mist, rain, and fog! Driving a bus is not an easy job either physically or mentally.
The second day after my 4 hour Spanish lesson I watch a spider about 4 inches in diameter capture a fly, spin its webbing around the fly and then suck the fluids out of the fly. Told Nancy the next day when she saw the spider -- about 12 feet from the dining room railing about the fly and she said "why didn´t you come get me I would have loved watching".
Another morning just after our 7:00 am breakfast I was looking down on the tributary that dumps into the river we took up from Coca and saw a beautful Morph Butterfly winging its way down the river. Something like this makes the humidity, mosiquitos, heat, etc. worth while.
Have learned about Ecuardor from our Spanish professors. On Thursday William and I spent two hours discussing economics in Spanish with a single piece of paper from math and graphics. You don´t understand the concept of hyperinflation until someone who lived it explains it to you. I understood about 90% of the conversation. Try explaining to a foreigner that the U.S.´s founding fathers didn`t want a Centeral Bank in Spanish when you are bored someday. The thrid largest concentraction of Ecuardians is in New York City: after Qualiquill and Quito, Ecuardor. You don´t realize how great the U.S. is until you hear someone explain there are no opportunities to move up in Equador. All our Spanish Teachers have degrees in something besides Spanish: Accounting, Computer Science, Public Administration, etc. but can not get jobs so they teach Spanish. William told me his uncle and cousin are both lawyers and neither has had a client in over six months. William also said he has no confidence in the the police, seams another uncle who was a politican was shot to death by the police while in their custody a couple of years ago. The next day we each described our home countries: regions, capitals, industries, etc. to the other. I spent a good deal of time explaining our University system which blew William away with the education opportunities in the U.S. Try to stay away from U.S. politics: have yet to meet an Ecuadorian who is impressed with our President and all are pissed off that their ex-President is living the good life in the U.S. and teaching at Harvard. The joke: Our ex-President teaches others how to rob a county blind at Harvard!
We will less than a mile from our landing on the return trip to Coca in our open motorized canoe when we developed engineer problems. And of course the river was going against us. Fortunately about 5 minutes later an army canoe came by and towed us into Coca.
Yo tengo una cabeza de pollo para Spanish verbos. Cabeza de pollo means a very poor memory: i.e. your brain is the size of a chicken´s brain and therefore you have no room to store anything.
Another good saying in Spanish: No te preocupes! Don´t worry. Nancy got this saying out one of four childrens book she was reading in Coca last night. The books are geared for 6 to 7 years old and I understood a lot of what had been written in the books but the verb tenses were almost totally foreign to me.
At first it seamed a large majority of the other travelers we were meeting were young Americans. After this week I would guess the majority have been Germans, mostly families.
There were two other students at La Selva: Shira (a jewish name) and Liza. Both just completed their first year of medical school at Columbia University. Shira has a pretty good handle on Spanish and Lisa is maybe just a little better than Nancy. They had been traveling separatly but were spending most of the last two weeks traveling together. Both had traveled a couple on weeks on their own: Shira in Ecuador mostly with an Ecuadorian doctor and Liza in Bolivia and Peru. Shira is from Connecticut and Liza from Tampa, FL. Shira has an undergraduate degee in Ecological Science from Princeton, spent a year in Nepal teaching, and then went to Columbia. Liza went to the University of Chicago and then to Columbia. Both very nice young ladies and fun to be around. These ladies have it together and I don´t think anything is going to stop them.
Generalization about young U.S. travelors -- all same very smart, adventureours, mostly out going and wanting to meet new people and experience new cultures. Wished I had taken the time to travel in my late teens and early 20´s -- have to make up this lack of traveling when young when I am older!
Tom
South America
Second night in our jungle hut about 3 minutes before lights out (10:00 pm & the generator is turned off) Nancy lets out a very small scream -- she says a foot long lizard just fell from the rafters on to the floor. I said, "sure". Two minutes later I hear a significant thud and Nancy says the lizard just fell again. Based on the sound of the second fall I have no doubts it was a foot or more in lenght and 4 or more inches around. The dining halls has a couple of pet taranula spiders for the tourist to play with in the evening and a big green parrot who answers: Roberto and bien to ¿Que llamos es? and ¿Como esta usted?
Do you speak Spanish or are you taking Spanish in School?
We spend most our time in La Selva studing Spanish but did do one 4 hour day tour and a 1.5 hour night tour. Identified better than 15 birds without going out specifically to see birds.
The bus trip to and from La Selva wasn´t as bad as we thought it might be. About 10 hours in duration going an average of 25 miles per hour, 70% of the road is unpaved, bridges are mostly one lane with steel plate, we did cross at least one stream each way (I was awake at the time) with no bridge, watched Disney´s "White Fang II" in Spanish on the way to and "Terminator III" in English with Spanish subtitles on the way back. Due to the road you are bounced and due to the roads the bus is always in a low gear and therefore loud. For some reason last night both Nancy and I woke up about the same time, probably the bus driver´s horn is what woke us. He was chasing a horse and a mule down the road. The bus followed the horse for about 50 yards and the horse found an opening in the jungle and got off the road but the mule must have run down the road with the bus right behind honking for 3 or 400 yards. Sleep is good on the bus -- you don´t see what you are driving on, how narrow the road is, what is coming at you, or how bad the visiblity is due to mist, rain, and fog! Driving a bus is not an easy job either physically or mentally.
The second day after my 4 hour Spanish lesson I watch a spider about 4 inches in diameter capture a fly, spin its webbing around the fly and then suck the fluids out of the fly. Told Nancy the next day when she saw the spider -- about 12 feet from the dining room railing about the fly and she said "why didn´t you come get me I would have loved watching".
Another morning just after our 7:00 am breakfast I was looking down on the tributary that dumps into the river we took up from Coca and saw a beautful Morph Butterfly winging its way down the river. Something like this makes the humidity, mosiquitos, heat, etc. worth while.
Have learned about Ecuardor from our Spanish professors. On Thursday William and I spent two hours discussing economics in Spanish with a single piece of paper from math and graphics. You don´t understand the concept of hyperinflation until someone who lived it explains it to you. I understood about 90% of the conversation. Try explaining to a foreigner that the U.S.´s founding fathers didn`t want a Centeral Bank in Spanish when you are bored someday. The thrid largest concentraction of Ecuardians is in New York City: after Qualiquill and Quito, Ecuardor. You don´t realize how great the U.S. is until you hear someone explain there are no opportunities to move up in Equador. All our Spanish Teachers have degrees in something besides Spanish: Accounting, Computer Science, Public Administration, etc. but can not get jobs so they teach Spanish. William told me his uncle and cousin are both lawyers and neither has had a client in over six months. William also said he has no confidence in the the police, seams another uncle who was a politican was shot to death by the police while in their custody a couple of years ago. The next day we each described our home countries: regions, capitals, industries, etc. to the other. I spent a good deal of time explaining our University system which blew William away with the education opportunities in the U.S. Try to stay away from U.S. politics: have yet to meet an Ecuadorian who is impressed with our President and all are pissed off that their ex-President is living the good life in the U.S. and teaching at Harvard. The joke: Our ex-President teaches others how to rob a county blind at Harvard!
We will less than a mile from our landing on the return trip to Coca in our open motorized canoe when we developed engineer problems. And of course the river was going against us. Fortunately about 5 minutes later an army canoe came by and towed us into Coca.
Yo tengo una cabeza de pollo para Spanish verbos. Cabeza de pollo means a very poor memory: i.e. your brain is the size of a chicken´s brain and therefore you have no room to store anything.
Another good saying in Spanish: No te preocupes! Don´t worry. Nancy got this saying out one of four childrens book she was reading in Coca last night. The books are geared for 6 to 7 years old and I understood a lot of what had been written in the books but the verb tenses were almost totally foreign to me.
At first it seamed a large majority of the other travelers we were meeting were young Americans. After this week I would guess the majority have been Germans, mostly families.
There were two other students at La Selva: Shira (a jewish name) and Liza. Both just completed their first year of medical school at Columbia University. Shira has a pretty good handle on Spanish and Lisa is maybe just a little better than Nancy. They had been traveling separatly but were spending most of the last two weeks traveling together. Both had traveled a couple on weeks on their own: Shira in Ecuador mostly with an Ecuadorian doctor and Liza in Bolivia and Peru. Shira is from Connecticut and Liza from Tampa, FL. Shira has an undergraduate degee in Ecological Science from Princeton, spent a year in Nepal teaching, and then went to Columbia. Liza went to the University of Chicago and then to Columbia. Both very nice young ladies and fun to be around. These ladies have it together and I don´t think anything is going to stop them.
Generalization about young U.S. travelors -- all same very smart, adventureours, mostly out going and wanting to meet new people and experience new cultures. Wished I had taken the time to travel in my late teens and early 20´s -- have to make up this lack of traveling when young when I am older!
Tom
South America
posted by Rambling Tom at 7:16 PM
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