Feliz Cumpleanos a mi!

As so often happens in life, everything accelerates drasticallly as any sort of deadline approaches. In this case, Saturday May 3rd is my last day in Quito, so of course life has taken on an adrenaline laced speed, quite the opposite of the preceeding two months.

That is not to say nothing happened during those delightful months. They have passed quite well, I have learned so much Spanish that it has thoroughly scrambled my beleagured mind, and I now speak less intelligently than I did a month ago, but at least I can understand way more. Along with the minutia of everyday life (excuse any spelling mistakes, the spellchecker is in spanish), a number of highlights have occured that are worth relating.

Mi Cumpleanos...

I turned 23 on April 22nd, Earth Day. I woke up in a great mood, despite the crippling abdominal pains induced by my ingestion of paiko, a natural remedy for parasites. ----- A brief side note: natural does not imply gentle, or even non-toxic. Paiko kills parasites by killing you. By far the most irritated my intestines have ever been, and that is saying quite a lot. ----- My only plan was to eat a ton of dumplings at our favorite chinese restaurant, along with a few beers to alleviate the indigestion. But El Perezoso had other ideas.

We went to class in the morning, with our well-rehearsed "Vamos a estudiar!!" echoing in the stairwell as we ascended the stairs. A card and a rock were waiting on my desk, a gift from my teacher, Lusmi. It was a very cool rock, taken from a gold mine near Cuenca, with lots of euhedral (well-formed) pyrite crystals, and a beautiful pocket of perfectly formed quartz crystals. We alternated between reviewing grammer and chatting until 11am, "La Pausa". I made my way upstairs to the roof, to enjoy a bit of sun and stretch it out. There is a small room on the roof which houses the coffee machine and is therefore the focal point of La Pausa. I walk into the room, and...

Feliz Cumpleanos!!! The whole school had gathered for the fun. And what fun it was. I was promptly introduced to the Ecuadorian custom of having your face smashed into your cake.

It should be noted that Ecuadorians as a rule do not have beards to catch the cake with.

The notable mark of my face in the cake did not deter anyone from enjoying it, thankfully. I further mangled the former beauty when I divided it into 12 pieces. Satisfied that the fun was over, I settled back, only to see Fernando and Alex, two of the teachers, take off their belts and begin cracking them menacingly. I laughed and laughed, what a great joke, they kept on cracking, so I kept on laughing. Well, to make a long story short, I got tired before they did, and was soon obliged to bend over the table.

Every person in the school got to take a shot. I've never heard so much glee. The girls didn't do much damage, but the men (or boys, i spose) sure took a special pleasure. Check out the Picasa album Mi Cumpleanos for all the fun, including some excellent pics of a cake for a beard.

The fun continued that evening as a few school friends were waiting at our chinese dumpling restaurant. After fully stuffing ourselves, Noble blindfolded me and led me on a long walk through our neighborhood, eventually ending up at the house of our salsa teacher, Christina. At this point, the 2nd surprise party commenced. Damn. I've never had two surprise parties in one day. Well done El Perezoso. By far the best Earth Day i've had in years. I felt just like a little kid again.

Other news...

I have officially been accepted and enrolled in the US Geological Survey's Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory volunteers program. What the hell does that mean? Starting September 15, I will be mapping lava flows on Mauno Loa, the big ass volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, contributing to constructing the most detailed map ever of a major volcano. For those who ain't familiar with geologic mapping, you basically hike around and identify rocks in the field, and then make a map of how they are distributed. It is by far the most enjoyable type of work I have yet encountered. I can't tell you how excited I am for this. I did not sleep at all the night I found out, and in fact did not sleep the next night either. This is actually a dream come true: I have been hiking around the volcanoes of the Big Island since I was a little kid.

Don't let the volunteer description fool you. Its real work. I just don't get paid. This means, officially, that I will be passing the entire year of 2008 without a job. Life is good.

All right, thats all for now. I'm off to Peru on Saturday, with a week long detour of fun along the way. Summer plans are coalescing, check my calendar on the sidebar, for when I'll be visiting a baseball stadium or mountain near you.

A War of Words (and actions) between Amigos

What is the biggest challenge of travelling abroad? Probably the giardia parasite that I just finished off, after a month of trying to kill it with remedies both natural and man-made that nearly killed me first. But now that the bastard (I took to calling it "mi nuevo amigo") is dead, I think getting along with my other best friend is the real challenge.

Understand, the highly esteemed El Perezoso*, aka Erin Noble, remains the truest of companions. But as anyone who has seen the two of us interact might expect, we have gotten into some ridiculous fights. By far the most impressivly absurd began on Saturday April 5th, as we walked towards the bus station from our apartment, en route to Cotopaxi, the most famously picturesque of all Ecuadorian volcanoes. Erin pulled out his trusty digital camera, held it in front of us, but before he could say "siete" I had launched into my anti-camera rant. He had heard it before, everyone has, especially Jenny Huang, but this time it really set him off. We walked to the station shouting at eachother in English, creating a truly ridiculous backpacking gringos scene.

Well, we made up and had a fantastic time on Cotopaxi. Erin took less pictures than he would of (probably), and I satisfied myself with my vaunted mental pictures**. I won the battle; there are no closeups of my face with an indistinct mountain in the background. But I lost the war. There are no pictures whatsoever of Cotopaxi for the enjoyment of my friends and family. I recently apologized to Noble for being such a pendejo (our spanish equivalent of jerkface), and we now have an understanding on cameras and pictures.

But that doesn´t help out the esteemed reader of this here blog. And my mental pictures of Cotopaxi are stunning, really, but there are a bit hard to download. So, as punishment of sorts, i´m going to try to describe just what the Andes are like to hike around in.

My first impression? Impressively...non-descript. A bit dull. Big and bland. See pictures of Ruco Pichincha for a more pictoral idea. The Andes are like the desert. It takes some time to appreciate the beauty and diversity of life that they contain. Well, three days on the slopes of Cotopaxi blew me away. I fell in love, just like I did with the desert after a few trips.

The cloud forests (bosque humido) cover the lower slopes of the Andes. They are spectacular, and obviously so. See pictures of Mindo for examples of gorgeous wildlife and lush tropical forest. But by 3000-4000 meters or so, the páramo takes over as trees disappear due to the high altitude. Oddly, the páramo is heavily vegetated, with bare rock only appearing on vertical faces. Extreme UV radiation and occasional snow (at the equator!) minimize the size of plants, yet at the same time the abundant moisture and lack of snowpack allow plants to grow year round. A strange combination, for sure.

I´ve divided the páramo into two types, paja and alpine meadow. The paja is a type of long grass that forms tussocks a few feet in circumfrence and a few feet tall. It extensively covers large areas, with tussocks growing separately but forming a minicanopy a couple feet high. This makes it impossible to see where you are putting your feet when hiking through it, and leads to a thoroughly miserable hiking experience. Twisted ankles are abundant and the going is frustratingly slow. Traversing a steep hillside covered in paja often involves more hands than feet. Oh, and I nearly forgot, after a rain (which is always) it is sopping wet and quickly soaks through boots and pants. I really can´t express strongly enough my dislike for hiking through this accursed plant.

Alpine meadow type páramo, on the other hand, is a dream to walk through. It is thoroughly covered in tiny lichens, mosses, fungi and all sorts of other really cool tiny plants. Wildflowers abound, yet are tiny, and usually escape notice. This is percfect landscape for rambling. Nothing to obstruct the way, and a hundred beautiful tiny things to check out with a handlens.

The landscape itself is fascinating as well, particularly because the lack of trees leaves the true form revealed. The climate is very wet, with near constant clouds, which produces impresssive erosional features. Quebradas (canyons/valleys/draws/gulches/defiles) grow to epic proportions quite quickly, and can be found on the macro and micro scale. Nearly every dirt road is incised well below the surrounding páramo as a result of this erosion, revealing beautifully stratified sedimentary layers beneath. They often display a pumice-ash sequence, topped off by a thick organic layer, testifying to the strong volcanic influence on the land.

The gentle and soft appearance does not get seriously challenged till nearly 5000m, as vegetation finally gives up the feet and raw rock takes over. Finally, snow and ice dominate, and the classic Andean images of verticality and volcanoes emerge.

So now I am an Andinista, because i like the Andinismo. Chévere.

Many more updates coming this week, all sorts of exciting things have been happening. I was accepted to Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory for a fall internship, I had a birthday, and I´m about to leave for Puno.


El Guía Perdido



* the word perezoso translates to "lazy" en español, but more impressively, it is the common name in Spanish for the beloved sloth.

** The Mental Picture - perfect for those who don´t like to interrupt the moment with a camera. Here´s how you do it. First of all, don´t be greedy. No more than one a day, usually. It has to come to you. You´re hiking in the mountains, or wherever, and all of a sudden you stop and get a really good feeling about where you are. Stay stopped. Don´t move. Spend at least five minutes rooted to the spot. Look all around you, note the fine details and the grand details. Discuss, with yourself, what makes this spot special. Feel the air, smell the vegetation, remember where you came from and where you are going. Frame the picture that you want to remember in your mind. And really let it sink in. Dig the tranquility of where you are. And I guarentee you will remember it for years to come. Its just kinda hard to share with other people.