clayhastings.com

2011-11-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

Well, well. Old man Winter seems to be here for keeps now. It's nice and sunny, but it's also cold! We have had plumbers and now Drywallers and tapers in our apartment for the last few weeks. They come in early in the morning and we have to get up so they can repair and replace stuff. So, anyway, not a lot else is happening. Winter is cold and damp here, so other than the usual working, playing, drinking hot fluids and fighting off colds by trying not to breathe too hard on the bus, you spend a lot of time trying not to eat too much rice. Hot steamed rice is awesome when the weather gets cold and it really makes you feel comfortable and warm, but it's easy to eat too much and thats when you start to feel bloaty and heavy with starch. Anyway, we eat a lot of rice and it's nice. I've been trying to bike as long as possible in this weather, but I draw the line at freezing rain. There is a point when bicycling starts to feel more like a stubborn chore than a nice fun way to get around. Anyway, I hope everyone out there in blog-reader-land is doing well and I'll post more. I promise.

IMG_5591

2011-08-11T17:08:00.001-07:00

IMG_5591, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

Here is another great pic of our cat. Cat images probably make up about 1/3 of internet traffic after Facebook and porn, but, well why not post another? I can think of far worse things to spend time looking at - like Facebook and Porn for example. He has extra toes and long legs so I'm guessing this is why he likes to sit with his legs stretched out in front like this, or maybe more likely, it's because he's too hot. The air has been a little cold in town lately, so I'm guessing either we're still going to get some really hot summer weather in the next few weeks, or the Canadian winter is already descending down from the north!!! Say it isn't so!

Freak out / live life!

2011-06-10T14:45:00.001-07:00

It was Italian days on Commercial Dr. This weekend the street was rendered carless yet again, and people took to the streets, doing whatever. Wandering and eating sausages mostly, but there's always a few people who take the opportunity to show off their moves. There even were live bands and a fashion show! I had some disappointing pasta considering it was Italian Days and all... The sausages looked good though. It was the most "summery" I've felt in the city though since last summer. Nothing like street food and street freaks to get this party started!
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KARKAZON!

2011-04-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

I used to play a lot of board games when I was younger and I still like to from time to time. My girlfriend's mother is really into board games and usually when we go over for a visit we do some gaming of some kind. Karkazon is a good game that's been around for the last few years, but I only picked it up recently. It's pretty fun. Basically, there is no board here. Gamplay consists of building the board and strategically placing markers in order to win points and resources. It's fun because no two boards are alike and there is a lot of strategy involved.
As time goes by, the game changes. We practically play it every time we go over there. Games are loads of fun. I'm not sure if it's happening yet, but I think that playing board games is an activity long overdue for a resurgence. It's a good way for people to hang out and be social without having to drink tons, go out or watch movies or knit or whatever. Fun for the whole family as they say.

East Van Mexican Brunch

2011-03-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Finally there is a place that does Brunch in Vancouver in a Authentic Mexican style. Some people with deep pockets have thrown a heap of interior decorating money into the Old Waldorf Hotel for another kick at the can. The whole place is done-up in this 50s tiki-miami kitch. It's a pretty stylish way to enjoy a heaping plate of chilaquiles or a frosty michelada to make your hangover more bearable. More importantly, the dishes are pretty good and authentic tasting so we don't have to drive 3 hours down to seattle to get Mexican breakfasts anymore.
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Las Islas Bonitas!

2011-01-06T16:35:00.000-08:00

Well, i'm currently enjoying the coldest days of Vancouver winter in the mildest and sunniest of spots: Hawaii! Who-hoo! The ride is was full of turbulance and a bit scary on the landing, but I got here in one piece at least. Tomorrow will include some early morning snorkeling and then maybe a little Karaoke in the eve. Either way, it's just enough to do a little snowbirding once in a while. In truth I am visiting my family here on Maui which is pretty special not only cause I get to be on Maui, but also because I get to be here with my family. My family go pretty far back on Maui. They have been here for five generations generations which in Hawaii is a fair amount of time. Every time I get off the plane here I'm just stunned by the overwhelming beauty of the place. There really just isn't anything totally like it. I took this photo on my mobile camera so it's not the greatest quality but it's the crater of Haleakela seen from Wailuku. The ocean is clear and blue out the window and the palm trees sway gently. This is the life - as they say.

Christmas on the Islands

2010-12-27T20:14:00.001-08:00

Well. It's been a fairly nice holiday season! For me yet again, I've been fortunate to have been invited by my gal's family to spend Christmas weekend with them on the ever-festive and smiley Saltspring Island. If you ever come to the coast of BC, seeing the gulf islands can be one of the highlights even for someone who's lived here forever like me. This is a region where breaching orcas, perching bald eagles, secluded bays and handmade crystal necklaces can all be found within a few hundred meters of each-other. You might even spot an eagle with a handmade crystal necklace on! Truthfully, the islands are a special place and there are many islands grouped closely together each with it's own wizards and vibe. Sadly though, all are filling up fast with people and cars and changing fast so pack up your guitar and head over for it may not be long before the strip malls and tech outlets descend to take over from the small hippytown charm.
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Been Just here

2010-12-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

Logans' run

I haven't been up to the things that I'd like to lately. Days come and days go and time seems to move by pretty quickly relative to everything else. I've been obsessing about the future lately. Not my petty future, but the big picture future of the planet and everything else for that matter. The big questions still abound like, "Are there ever going to be hovercars and jetpacks?" and "Is it all leading somewhere and is that somewhere new and gleamy or is it like evolution in reverse and will we just climb back into the sea and become algae again?" A friendly blogger friend of mine recommended a website to me awhile back and, like a lot of web stuff, I just copied it somewhere and filed it away for a time when I'd have more time to check it out. Usually it takes me a fair amount of time to get around to finding that info again but I finally did and it's kind of a cool thing, but more topically - a true futuristic invention. It's called StereoMood and when you go there you basically stream all this music that has been organized accordioning to mood. What this means is that you can just dial-in your emotional state instead of the other way around. It's kinda handy if you like your current emotional state and don't want to listen to music that may change it. Now all they need is some computer device to tap into our brainwaves and find out how you really feel not how you think you feel. That and then adjust some colored lights and stuff that goes with the music and then you'll be into some actual Logan's Run type of futuristic stuff. Oh wait, Logan's world totally sucked and he was trying to escape. Maybe it's more like Star Trek. I'm thinking of a living room that when you walk into it immediately starts to play music and pulse lights that reflect your mood! Anyway the website has been handy a total of 2 times over the last six months which for a website is pretty good in my books. I'll probably come back to this one regularly. Just don't tell me to go to carousel. I know how that one ends and I'm way past 30.

The Pet

2010-11-29T16:46:00.000-08:00

on good days Lloyd will hug you

We now have a cat on premises. He's been here for about 7 months now actually, but I haven't shown any pictures of him. His name's Lloyd and he's a friend of the family who suddenly had no place to go due to an untimely change of residency by his owner. No matter - we took him in and although at 14 years of age he's pretty long in the tooth to be moving from place to place he's still got a lot of youthful energy for an old coot. He chases stuff and likes to attack legs and hands at a moments notice and even draw blood if need be. Mainly though he sleeps the days and nights away when he's not doing the eating or attacking thing. It's mainly good to have a nice omen of good luck around. I hear that in many countries and in many cultures cats are considered a sign of good luck and prosperity, which is surprising since he seems to cost upwards of 50 bucks a month in food and cat sand. The latter of which there is nothing "good luck" about. I'm guessing ancient Egyptians and Japanese people had no sense of smell.

Lloyd at rest

Nevertheless I'm planning on getting most of my investment back once I hit the casinos with this guy. Lloyd in all seriousness is very sweet and friendly most of the time. He likes pats and scratches even more and will sometimes keep your feet warm at the foot of the bed. It's always nice to stare at the gently heaving belly of a curled-up cat on cold mornings or when you are totally stressed out. Other than that though, he's been a big inspiration to me - mainly to get off my feet and on my ass and do some heavy napping with chow breaks in between. Now i know why shut-in's always collect cats - it's a birds of a feather kind of thing.

Just sitting around...

2010-11-23T22:47:00.000-08:00

Basically - yeah. I'm just sitting around. The last few weeks have been pretty blah and the weeks before that weren't anything to get too excited about either. Looking ahead looks pretty unexciting as well, but I am planning a trip early next year to tropical climes so I don't really have the right to complain too much. I seem to be spending quite a bit of my free time on the "web" lately which is not abnormal, but it has gotten me to thinking - "What's with all the time spent on the web?" What for? What's it all leading up to? I guess on one level it's basically a new kind of TV especially because we don't have one. I guess when surroundings like this pic are all you have, the internet starts to look pretty interesting. But it's also keeping me from doing fun and productive things, non-internetish things, so I think I should try and limit myself. Things are also getting kind of Christmasy around here. Some people in one of the apartments across (it might even be one of the ones in the picture) have already got a tree up! Didn't these peoples mothers teach them that things are all the more enjoyed when the tension of waiting builds a little bit? Christmas is fun, but I start to feel pretty grinchy when people get all crazy and overanxious.

Up to the BC interior to visit family

2010-09-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

My family live in the BC interior as many of you know and it's beautiful up there most of the time and super beautiful in the summer and even the late summer so I was pretty happy to be able to drive up there and visit a few days with my father. As usual, not much happened which was pretty much what I wanted to happen. We sat around and talked, caught up, and went for a really nice day hike up a mountain biking trail. Mostly I hibernated in my fathers small house and ate dried fruit and drank wine at night. It was a nice time to be in his little town of 300 or so people as most of the tourist rush had passed and people seemed to be slowly returning to a kind of mellower way of life. I bought a sandwich and a small pizza at a new pizza place that opened up down the road. Those were key events. These shots are from the day hike we went on.

There is an abandoned mine concentrator on this trail above town as well as the remnants of an old mining camp. The hills around here are full of discarded mining equipment both old and newer stuff left behind by hopefuls and a few lucky strikes. Apparently the man who owned this giant affair and lived above it in a mansion was ruined by the time the mill closed; his fortunes squandered. This camp was surprisingly developed. It had piped water and many amenities like butchers and barbers and the like...

this trail is really nice. It hugs the shady side of the river valley it runs along and has some nice biking spots including a tram to cross a river.

Here's where the river pours and blasts through some narrow rocks. Well I didn't see much wildlife until I embarked on the long drive home. Right on the side of the road I saw mountain goats, and then later a moose and finally nearing Vancouver, a bear. It was almost ridiculous to see so many animals wandering around all at once, beer commercial ridiculous, but it's good to see the big creatures up and about even if you have to blast by them going at a hundred kilometers an hour and they always kind of have this slackjawed dumbfounded expression on - except the beaver that me and my gal saw once. That guy was pissed off.

New Post Shmoo Post

2010-09-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

Well, actually, it's now pretty much the end of summer climes here! There is a distinct cold "tang" in the air now that we are into Sept. I am thinking of heading up and over the mountains into the interior of BC for a pre-fall visit to my hometown and some "facetime" (real facetime that is, not iphone facetime) with my one and only father. It's been more than a year since I was back there so I'm excited to get back into the swing of things and in many ways going in the late summer is good as most people will be gone back to wherever they came from and only the permanent residents will remain feasting on their harvests and figuring out how they are going to get wood in for the winter. ---- a....and I've returned! Well kind of. I'm back in busyness here in Vancouver after hanging out with my father in the country. He seems well and content and he is as spry as ever. I keep wondering if someday he'll get old but he was quick to jump off on a day hike in the woods with me even though he was bagged from a hike the day before. I was feeling kind of tired when we'd climbed a little, about half - way through, when he spotted a nice place to try and scramble up further onto some slope and up he went. So I was pretty impressed to say the least. I'll post some pictures later. In the meantime another food pic here. My gal and I made some bean tacos the other night and she stuffed and fried up these flor de calabaza or zuchini flowers! Woah. They were quite tasty especially when stuffed into a taco! Some icy coconut water on the side makes a nice late summer snack! Well, that is all for now as I'm back home I really cant say much more, but the job is plodding along and I can feel October looming.

Swimming Summmer

2010-09-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

Well it's the middle or maybe even the middling-end of summer and we are in it. So far it's been good. We've been spending most of our time in town and about the town and working in town. Sometimes on the weekends, we go on a "jaunt" to a local hiking spot or swimming spot. I've been swimming in a couple of small lakes and in the ocean. The ocean is my favorite. Some don't like swimming in the ocean because of the salt and the sharp, barnically things that slice-up your feet etc. but I like it. Around here even though you don't get the pounding surf and roaring intensity that you do in other parts of the worlds oceans but at it's best the ocean around Vancouver can get warm enough to endure for long periods of swimming in the summer. Fear of swimming seems to be common. It is one of those things that some people seem to have an innate fear of water and what could be underneath it. Somehow, lakes seem creepier to me. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the deadness of them and the stillness of them. It just seems more like something's lurking down there, something forgotten and nasty.

5x4 garden plot

2010-06-15T00:43:00.000-07:00

We're pretty excited as it seems that we're actually able to grow a few things here in the middle of downtown Vancouver. I mentioned a few posts ago that we were trying our hand at urban gardening - well we've already begun to reap the harvests! Small harvests mind you, but, there ain't nothing wrong with free veggies no matter how few in my eyes. So far we've got some pretty healthy looking kales and a coupla fairly healthy zuchini plants. The growth and success of the latter being especially surprising. We are already munching on the kale and have some nice zuchinis in our fridge. Some of our kales got attacked by root eating maggots which was kind of gross and a bit disappointing but it did free up some space for some tomato plants so we shall see. So far we've just put seedlings and seed in the ground, watered it and boom! Up came these veggies. We did buy some pretty decent compost for the garden and we used some fairly wormy compost from the compost bins to add growiness to the soil.

As you can see the chard is doing pretty good and our zucchinis are already quite mature. I'm actually afraid they are going to outgrow the box and start encroaching on our neighbours plots. Aphids are abounding on most of our stuff but we've been killing them manually so far. These photos don't really do the garden justice, but if you could've seen this area as the empty gravel lot it was before the community garden moved in, you'd realize the transformation. So far it's a lot of fun. Maybe I finally had to come to the city to be a country farmer type, but let's not get too carried away.

Sickness

2010-06-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

I seem to be getting sick about half the time these days and the other times in-between bouts of recovery so that everything seems to be merging into one long sickness. I'm not sure who to blame it on. Most likely, is it my general lackluster attention to personal health and water-drinking etc. But could it also be the weather or something in the environment around me? I'm exposed to a lot of disease at my workplace. Contrary to intuition, health food stores are a great place to get sick. Mainly this is because there are lots of people in an enclosed space, but I think there are some other, more unsavory aspects of the atmosphere in health food stores that also contribute. Most stores are dusty and mine is no exception. Dust can trap bacteria and mold irritates the throat and sinuses making them vulnerable as well. Refrigerators are cold and shock the immune system. A busy store can be a stressful place and stress as we all know is a big factor in sickness. Here's where I may get into trouble but I'm going to say it. Vegetarians and counter-culture artisto-types are also hotbeds of bacteria and viruses. It takes one to know one, but I can personally attest that Vegetarians often need to supplement their diets with foods that "beef-up" the bodies resistance that aren't beef itself. Not all vegetrons pay attention to this and this is where you get the pale waif effect so often seen. That's when the diseases pounce. I've lived in basement hovels with several roomies before and while it's usually a groovy good time, not every one pays the same attention to personal hygiene and with lots of people coming and going and slopping the cutting-board with onion and garlic finger juices so do their diseases. To add to this Vancouver has had a fairly cold and drippy May and early June so far. Cold and drippy outside - cold and drippy inside. Anyway, despite all this, not everyone is as sick as I am so it's also got to be about something I'm doing or not doing. I'm sick of being sick and making others around me sick as well. It's time I took my fingers out of my mouth, sanitize the keyboard, hit the treadmill and exorcise this demon of disease from my lifestyle.

The waning summer of my dirty 30's

2010-05-31T22:05:00.000-07:00

Well, generally speaking my "dirty thirties" as they sometimes call the decade of your thirty something years is almost at a close. Is that significant? Well, it doesn't feel like much is going to change too quickly, but I guess it's a milestone of sorts and people do say that things do start to change around this time in your years. I have had a lot of adventures in these years at any rate. Compared to my twenties it's been quite a whirlwind and in a good way for the most part. In these times if you can live a decade of life and note mostly good times, that's a plus I say. Taking quick account: my living situation has improved, I have a great relationship, I live in a desirable and moderately glamorous city, and I can afford to eat relatively healthy food, like home made blueberry and strawberry pancakes for example. It's all pretty good stuff and I'm still more than a (possible) decade away before the cracks in this great scheme we've made for ourselves in the western world totally start to widen and spread revealing the rotten centre and give way to the torrents of woe that tarnish the rest of the globe. At least that's what the experts are predicting.

Speaking of our times - I was out walking with some chums the other night on the strip heading to a bar. We passed a non-descript and darkened shopping plaza when I spotted this business which I think outlines our times quite nicely. A business that thrives on the need for people to hire other people to help them look for crappy jobs is sign enough of things sliding downhill, but when that business itself goes tits-up it's time to put a lock on your gas tank and stock up on canned consumables. I'm probably overstating things, but it's something to be looking out for at any rate. Keep your eyes fixed on the horizon I always say and don't forget to look over your shoulder occasionally too. Speaking of which, summer is here so if you are unfortunate enough not to have have gainful employment, enjoy your time off as much as possible. Whew! It's always hard to leave thing on an up-note for me which, considering my situation shouldn't be, so I'll just sign off before I think of another dire thing to say.

Just twidding the look

2010-05-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

Just twiddling the look right now and trying to finalize my move from my hosted site and the new Blogger hosted site. Hopefully I'll be able to get the hang of it. Bare with me readers! ... actually. I think I just figured it out. Now my blog is entirely hosted with Blogger.com or Blogspot or whatever, but it will link through from clayhastings.com for now. If anyone has ever been to chinatown and if you've ever had the need for cheap crockery in your kitchen you've probably bought a few of these omnipresent "fish bowls" at one of the finer chinatown shops. Chinatown has changed over the years and I daresay, it's gotten better. They have better stuff anyway. Better shops and more selection. This has probably co-incided with the rise of China as the next great "trading nation". It's still all curios and trinkets, but better curios and trinkets! Heres to new looks and new stuff.

2010-05-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

Well. Summer is almost here and since we've gotten back ito the city we discovered that the waiting list for a community garden moved up and now we have a plot. It's pretty small, but there should be enough space to get some veggies going. The plot is right on the corner of one of the busiest intersections in Vancouver, so it's kind of weird to be gardening in the roar of traffic, but when the plants get high in the summer it really transforms the corner- birds chirp, bees buzz by, some people just stroll through to check out whats going on. We probably won't care too much about the traffic when we're munching on fresh greens! So far we've been experimenting with a few kales we bought. Plugged em in there and returned a few days later to find a bunch of the plants dug up and animal fur tufts around. Not a perfect start, but that's the way with gardening I guess. We're pretty much learning as we go so we'll see how successful we are this time around. We grew some really enthusiastic cherry tomato plants in our living room last year but they never produced a great bounty of tomatoes and they were kinda smallish. Finally the plants began to bristle with aphids and we ended up throwing them out in disgust! Thanks nature! Well anyway, this time we are back and this time we have bigger plans. We are planning to harvest the very power of the sun and the earth itself and use it to make us some vegetables.
We've been eating quite a bit of veggies recently. After 3 months of high meat and starch content meals it's nice to eat on the greener side.

On another note we've got a great new cat Lloyd who just moved into our place. He had no where else to go so we took him in. We had another cat here before, Steve, but he went back to his owner so it's nice to have another hanging around. Which is pretty much all he does. So far he seems to be settling in fairly nicely, but since he previously an outdoor cat, the indoor life is proving to be challenging. Especially when he's only got a few hundred feet to wander around in. I think we'll be needing to buy a cat-tree soon! He's become a bit neurotic and has taken to attacking legs and feet at all hours and tearing around the place even though we've invested in a catnip-infused scratcher, various fake mice, and make string-fluff chaser things but maybe that's just the way it is with cats.

Well we are back in the swing

2010-04-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

Well we are finally back in town and doing our thing, and by thing I mean chiefly, working and getting re-settled in our place. The work part is pretty simple but the settling is proving to be a little more challenging. Vancouver is quite different from pretty much all the places we visited, there was an initial adjustment period. What is mostly noticeable coming back to a place like Canada from pretty much anywhere else in the world is how efficient and well-run the country is. There are a lot of resources here per-person and you can feel it in everything you do. You can see why many people in other parts of the world are envious of Canadians and would love to come and check out some of the "goods and services" we enjoy here. Anyway, in the interests of interestingness, I'll continue to blog more photos of our trip just so that readers can get a little bit better idea of some of the places we went to and the things we did. Here's a pic of me hanging out with a little monkey named "Nyo-Nyo" which I thought meant "Nerd" in spanish, but he was anything but nerdy. I guess he was pretty domesticated as he had no problem climbing up onto my neck and making himself at home. I had no ideas that monkeys were capable of being so affectionate. Usually they appear kind of intense and hostile to me, but this guy was a real buddies forever kind of guy.

So basically what's going on here is that at the end of our trip we went to the bustling city of Santa Cruz Bolivia but only for a night. Santa Cruz is Bolivia's largest city and it's big and a bit hot and crazy, and we found it pretty comfortable for our last few nights. This toucan is the mascot for the hostel that we stayed at. He was quite friendly and would nibble on your hand and jump around curiously looking at you.

We visited this area in Bolivia towards the end of our trip that was fairly interesting and quite beautiful called Samaipata. It was a small town up in the mountains surrounded by spectacular natural scenery and countryside not to mention some cryptic ruins of international note. The main square down the mountains and in the jungly plateau of big city Santa Cruz is quite nice as you can see. There are dudes in white suits who walk around with roll-carts full of ice cream and other strolling treats. The square is immensely popular every night. People seem to always milling about taking in the air or socializing on hot nights. This old red rock is some kind of geographic highlight near to the area of Samaipata where tourist sometimes go to and do outdoor stuff. It's beautiful around here and while our guide book was touting and tempting us hither. We had a plane to catch. Next time - as they say.

This blog has moved

2010-04-01T15:10:00.001-07:00

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2010-04-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hello clayhastings.com readers! Well. We are safely and soundly back in Vancouver and not enjoying the cold cold weather and wet and drizzly air and being somewhat partially placated by the better quality espresso and rapid-transit system. Needless to say, I already have a cold and a very sore throat and the first two days back at my jobber were a bit sluggish, but that's to be expected. Whoo-Hoo! well. I'm back in town and now I've got to do those things that you do when you come back from trips etc. Like try and figure out how I can go on another trip sooner than I last did. But anyway, I'm pretty sure people don't want to hear rambling drivel about my inner plans. I just thought I'd update you on the fact that I'm back in Canada and back in Business and you can keep tuning to this web-address from time to time to see more pics and opinions about pics and things that I think about when looking at my pics and other stuff too. So check here from time to time!

Amazonas and SAnta Cruz

2010-03-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

I´ve got little time to post and this connection is too slow for photos, but I´ll just say that we descended down down down into the very hot and steamy jungles and arrived in Santa Cruz Bolivia tired but thrilled at having ridden the bus yet again down from Andean heights into the Amazon basin and then a little bit above it. Santa Cruz is very hot nonetheless and a fairly handsome and laid-back kind of place. This is definitely the most prosperous Bolivian city we´ve been to. There are people of many cultural backgrounds here and the wealth of the bolivian oil and agro industries is readily noticible. Hipsters and middle class families ply the streets in fashonable clothing and SUVs along with the rest of the riff-raff. Despite it´s wealth and sprawling nature, the city of Santa Cruz´s nice spots are fairly navagable on foot. We are now up in the highlands if you can believe it as we have returned up here to the jungly rainforests for one last gasp at the Andes! ...and then it's home to work and other stuff. Neither of us are really ready to leave this part of the world, but we have so much we have to do back home and more importantly, we are pretty much out of money and while I relish the thought of being here longer, it's pretty hard to keep up the fun times and travel on Bolivian wages assuming we could even get gigs down here. It's always best to end on a good note, so back into the arms (or rather, the arms of our friends)of Vancouver we go! To those in Vancouver - see you soon!

Cochabambina Shmochacambina

2010-03-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

We are holed up in the very Balmy and comfy city of Cochabamba almost smack-dab in the centre of Bolivia. The bus ride here was a bit crazy, but we made it in two pieces and with our luggage. We took an unconventional route here and as most of the more comfortable busses go at night it meant we had to change busses in Orouro at around 3 in the morning. I guess the spaced-out driver of the bus and his swamper/helper didn´t realize we were jumping off in the middle of the night as the bus was due to go through to La Paz. As we noticed that we were leaving town, I decided to knock on the driver´s cab door. The situation in the cab area of this bus was not conventional and the 4 dudes engaged in heated talk (drink?) were not happy about having to talk to me much less alter their trajectories. We ended up (after some harsh words and 3AM sleepy eyed searching in the luggage compartment for our bags) getting dropped off in a rather deserted industrial zone near the outskirts of the city, which in any town, and especially in South America, is not the nicest place to be walking with all your stuff. Luckily cabs are fairly common in most Bolivian cities and one came by quicky enough that we didn´t have to get that weird, scared, menacing spidey-sense feeling you often get when you´re walking though a totally obviously impoverished and dangerous place and totally obviously not belonging there and totally obviously wishing you weren´t there.

Anyway, Cochabamba is a bustling little city that sprawls along the floor of a warm and productive little valley surrounded by dryish and rocky mountains. On the next bus in the morning as the sun came up we were treated to some spectacular views! In terms of climate, it feels a little like parts of Mexico here. So far I´ve found Bolivian cities to be very busy with people. To compare, every night in these citys looks like a festival weekend in Vancouver to me. On warm nights the plazas and streets fill with young and old alike.

Children kick balls, teens make-out and sometimes there´s a performance or a politician is gladhanding for mayorship, but most people just seem to be out for some socializing and people-watching. We´re treating ourselves to a rather nice room with non-electric hot water nozzles and Cable TV as it´s in a very good location and we were desperado for someplace quick to sleep after the big Red-Eye the night before.

Have I mentioned yet that it´s nice to be someplace tropical and warm? Well, the world flocks to such places for many reasons not the least of which is the scent of Jasmine blossoms and possibly new and exotic foods. Bolivia is all bout the meat when it comes to stuffing your maw. I wolfed down this dish just before jumping on the bus and faught it all the way from Sucre to Cochabamba. It´s called Pica Lo Macho and it´s basically a version of Poutine but instead of cheese curd on top it´s 3 meats, yes, 3 meats (chicken, beef, sausage), veggies, egg and hot peppers! Yee Haw! Not for the weak - stomached.

Sucre to Tarabuco

2010-03-15T15:41:00.000-07:00

We finally got a chance to sample some of these giant bean pod things that we have been seeing people snacking on from the heights of Quito to the Coasts of Peru to the streets of Sucre. Once inside there are giant beans that you don´t eat, but if you suck off the sort of fluffy pulpy stuff surrounding them you get a mouthful of pulpy and rather sweet stuff. Then you ditch the bean. Not bad if you´re looking for something nice and sweet to stave off the hunger for something more exotic. The seats on the busses in Equador were littered with the pod casings and seeds. This other package has some kind of unkown to us corn kernals that are cooked until they puff-up like Popcorn, but they don´t explode completely. It´s delish and as good if not better than popcorn, but more compact and it doesn´t go stale right away. Puffed things seem to be all the rage in Bolivia. Actually throughout the Andes you can get popcorn almost everywhere and other puffed snacks. Markets in Bolivia frequently have a place that sells giant giant bags of puffed stuff. Some of it is a mystery. Mostly it´s puffed wheat, barley, quinoa, and other assorted grains that you can puff. Some of it is sweetened. It´s puffin awesome and ridiculous. Watermelon is, of course, everywhere and ready for the eating.

Have I mentioned that Burros are awesome? We all know that, but sometimes we forget and I have to put up another burro picture here to remind myself and others of their undaunting usefulness and their crazy big heads and their timeless sad-sack expressions. They are cheaper and mellower than horses, they eat spiney stuff and you can ride them! We ran into these burros along with their mentally troubled owner on the streets of Tarabuco which is just outside of Sucre. Tarabuco is a great place to shop for Bolivian souvenirs and other hand and factory-made stuff not from Bolivia but from other places.

At one point we found a hand-made bag with ¨ecuador¨ printed on it, but the town is also small and pretty and temperate surrounded by dry hills with little farms. It felt almost Californian without the Californians. This old colonial building caught my eye. There were many old one´s decaying in the heat.

All in all it was a rather unremarkable town with a rather large Sunday market aimed at both locals and Tourists alike. Unlike Sucre things seemed a little bit more ¨desperado¨ here. Many people would come up and shove stuff in your face for sales and were a little pushy, but there was some really beautiful authentic stuff as well and for the ammounts of work put into these quality hand-made textiles, we had to walk away with a few things. BUT...

...It´s worth mentioning this giant and very graphic statue in the central plaza of an Incan warrior standing victorious above what looks like a conquistador soldier. He is holding aloft a blood-filled horn with one hand and in the other he holds the man´s heart freshly ripped from his chest! there are rivulets of blood rolling down from his mouth and he has this intense expression on his face. It was a pretty grizly scene, but I guess some moments can´t be captured with a stoic figure with a big mustache on a horse or what-have-you. heheh...

2010-03-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

There are some other photos around here somewhere... hmmm. Just let me look in this shoebox. Aha! There they are. I´ll just shoot you the link and then we can forget about meeting at a coffee bar or at your house for a slideshow or ever for that matter. Ther´ll be more too - HERE

More of where I´ve been

2010-03-12T13:36:00.000-08:00

Well I am still here in Sucre in Bolivia and we are enjoying the warm colonialness of this comfy city. The weather seems to encircle and roll over the city but rain rarely touches it even though it appears to fall in the surrounding mountains every day. I guess that explains the abundance of fresh produce and fruits from the area.

I just thought I´d use this post to show some more pictures of the places we´ve been over the last few weeks. We were staying near the black market zone of La Paz where there is simply too much stuff for sale all at once to really describe the place in detail, but it´s simply a neverending maze of all kinds of stuff. It was worth seeing but it´s a little hard to find specific things unless you´re familiar with the layout of the place. Which could take a lifetime.

La Paz is a pretty busy place. Actually I´ve noticed that Bolivian towns are particularly busy with foot traffic. La Paz seems to have the least personal autos of any city I´ve ever been to, however, he streets are clogged with trucks, busses, small combi busses and throngs of bustling locals and tourists alike. There is no real centralized public transportation, so it´s a good thing the city limits are fairly small. Most transit seems to go from the heights of El Alto and back which is located up above La Paz´s canyon wall (and spilling over it) and is no longer a suburb of La Paz but more of a twin city to it.

This is just a little parrot-thing that we took some pictures of in the Musical Instrument Museum because we like parrots.

Sucre, La cuidad de estudiantes

2010-03-10T09:06:00.000-08:00

We are now firmly inside Bolivia and enjoying the balmy climate and somewhat laid-back vibe of Bolivia´s judicial capitol, Sucre. It´s quite hot here actually and much dryer than Lake Titicaca or even La Paz. This is a smallish and well-preserved colonial built city with narrow streets that bustle seemingly constantly with throngs of Students of all ages. There is a more prosperous feel here and the city has many private schools of all types. We are actually looking for some more schooling ourselves here as we hear that this is a good place to study spanish.

This is a picture of something I´ve been meaning to snap for awhile. It´s a clay oven at a garden restaurant that we ate at yesterday that is typical of the andes and almost every restaurant we go to seems to have one. What this means is great baked potatoes, broiled meats, baked fish, and pizzas, lasagnas etc... Usually they are wood-fired and, from what I can gather, are a traditional Andean cooking method. When the results are this good, why buck tradition?

Our hotel room has a kitchen so we went to the market yesterday and bought everything we needed for a good Quinoa soup which seems to be a staple down here. The markets here are an adventure unto themselves. I´ve never been to a market that is taken up 2/3 with it´s meat section. Check out this Chola whacking into a hunk of meat with a giant axe. As always, market trips are pretty challenging for people more accustomed to isles of pre-wrapped meatstuffs and sanitized deli-counters but the shock wears off eventually. We finally found a ¨supermarket¨ where we could get a few things we couldn´t find in the market, like soysauce, and that was as weird as the open market but in a different way. It was like shopping in a supermarket with about a third of the selection on it´s shelves. The dairy section consisted of various plastic bags of milk and yogurt with only a few brands represented. All the produce was wrapped in plastic.

All in all this city is really comfortable and pretty. There are many old, colonial buildings and since it´s a university town there is a youthful vibrance and the primary tree-lined streets are well looked after. The main square is full of people of all types socializing and sucking on delish coconut popsicles in the shade of giant trees. Yeah, I think we are doing OK.

La Paz

2010-03-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

Well, we are in La Paz still. We´ve actually found a great place to stay so we´ve decided to hang out for a bit here in this city. We will head to Sucre or maybe Cochabamba on Sunday, but we will have to see how things go. I was remarking in my last post about how strange it is to see people from distinct cultures or places ¨acting¨ or sort of performing for the tourist cameras. Anyone who comes from a heavily touristed place will understand what I´m talking about. Things can get even weirder when the average daily income in a place is 100 times less what it is in your country. When I saw the villagers of the Uros Islands greeting us with a familiar greeting in forced unison it reminded me of the TV show FAntasy Island where all visitors recieved a Lei and drink with an umbrella in it as soon as they stepped off the plane. I found myself being constantly on-gaurd for this kind of behavior. For awhile anyone in customary indiginous dress that seemed a little too clean or made-up I regarded as a ¨performer¨ and it made all sorts of things seem staged to me. Much like the Native carver I once saw Japanese tourists videoing at the mouth of the Capilano Suspension Bridge, these people seemed to be putting on a show. I suppose we´ve all done similar things - especially for money, but when the behavior is extended into the confines of your home, it seems even weirder. Hayley was good enough to point out, however, that while a lot of men on the Island of Taquile, for example, wore customary dress when soliciting rooms for the night and then changed into more mass-fabricated modern clothes for the morning chores, most indiginous women of these communities continued to wear their traditional clothes at all times. Maybe it´s not all a performance then. I´m still not sure. If you go to NYC and get a cab, do you think that guy is being particularly familiar and projecting a NYC attitude to help the tourist have an authentic experience? Hard to say I guess... Well, enough of that. WE are currently in La Paz which is a big city and full of all kinds of inauthentic and authentic people alike.

The sprawl of La Paz up above the valley is called El Alto and it´s the Ayamara capitol of the world I´m told. I´m pretty sure most people are too busy hustling here to worry too much about weather or not things look good for the tourists. What I do know is that this snack food known as a Saltena and is basically a baked empanada full of juicy meat or veg stew is constantly orbiting around in my mind as I walk the streets and wonder what we should do for lunch.

Lake Titicaca

2010-03-04T14:58:00.001-08:00

Well things seem to be taking a long long time on this computer in La Paz Bolivia that I am attempting to upload about 10 pictures onto. In that case I may have to use the addage that a thousand words are worth a picture and write sans pictures for today. If you are still with me I guess it means that you are a truley dedicated Clayhastings.com reader and don´t mind the lack of dazzling colors to titilate your senses. Anyway, we are obviously in La Paz, Bolivia and it´s pretty amazing. I´ve never seen a city quite like it. Aha! there the photos go - uh, disregard the intro to this piece, as some of the photos just went though. I´ll be adding a few here and there.

We are up in the high altiplano and we recently went to Lake Titicaca where we vistited the renouned islas Flotantes. These are made by the legendary and much touted in the tourist guides, Uros people who proved to outlast the Lakes original empire, and the incans, ...and even the Conquistadores to some degree. They are still living out there on the lake tucked away on self-built islands of Totora Reeds, fishing and catering to the whims of Tourists. Will they outlast this latest cultural invasion? Time will tell, but from the little mini tour we got on our way out to the Isla Taquile, it seems like things are going OK for these folks dispite the dozens of tour boats that land every minute. It´s easy to be cynical about ¨touristy¨ attractions and hard to see the value through the playacting etc... but
money in any form can´t be that bad when you´re sleeping in a hut that´s floating in the middle of a cold lake can it? These people seem to be taking the onslaught in stride. As if they have a choice I guess.

These photos are taken from the Isla Taquile which is where we spent a night in a sort of family-run house/hotel. They were really nice and this Island is an amazing thing to see! There are no cars and little paths run throughout the island past sheep pens and potatoe patches. It reminded me of the place Frodo Baggins lived before he had to leave. Totally fairytalesque. I will try to post more photos of this place as it was amazing. Note the angle of the clouds. In Lake titicaca it always feels like you are looking out the window of an airplane or hiking in the high sierra, but there are so many things going on up here you feel as if you have discovered another planet.

The woman who is running this shammy internet cafe just started downloading another Telenovela and my computer has slowed to nothing so I guess I´ll just try to post pictures later through a faster connection. We are really enjoying La Paz so far. The food especially and surprisingly but not surprisingly the people too! There is a lot going on here - protests, parties, tourism, and markets, markets, markets! It is like a canyon with a metropolis crammed into it. The part of the city we are staying in seems to be 50% made up of stalls and stands offering everything from Llama fetuses for Pachamama ofrendas to Solar Powered calculators. You must navigate through the mazes of tarps and comedors (lunch counters) but you don´t really mind because it´s quite fun and interesting and useful if you´re actually looking for something. Wish us luck!

Low times HIgh times

2010-02-25T12:15:00.000-08:00

AS we are finding out there are Low times and High times up here in the Andes, and the times don´t get much lower than when Machu Picchu is closed and it´s raining quite often. The good part is that rooms are cheaper, you can always find a nice one and you are not always feeling like you are simply part of some giant qeue of tourists bussing, flying and plodding methodically from site to site, even though that might be what you are doing. We are in Puno Peru which is a pretty nice little bustling town perched on the shores of Lake Titicaca, but even here things are what you might call ¨dead¨ as touristing goes. We are liking the relative mellowness of the tourist trade, but are finding it a bit weird being the only two people in a giant resteraunt full of tables with aproned staff looking-on as we dine on Alpaca medallions (only me non-veg)and try not to talk too loudly because the place is so quiet the squeaking of the forks on our plates sounds obnoxious. I kid you not, every place we go into is simply abandoned and while our dutiful Book-Wearhouse purchased guidebook exclaims ¨crowds of locals and tourists alike rub shoulders in this friendly and bustling room while delicious local food is served and nightly live music resounds¨ it is dissapointing to be whispering in a corner over two plates of drab food while over-dressed waiters glower at you from behind the cash desk. We have decided to simply use the guide as a way to know where the resaurants are and then find out where the crowds are eating. This has worked for us so far on this trip. I admit it was probably our fault for tying ourselves too much to the Guidebook, as helpful as it has been. It seems, just like the weather up here, tourist traffic is a changeable thing. There is also the strange element of gringoesque restaurants always having a CD changer full of some kind of early 90´s top 40 NOrth American music compilations. I can picture some restaurant manager saying to the staff, ¨Now don´t screw with this selection. This is what the tourists like. This is what they want to hear, so don´t go putting any of that Salsa or Cumbia crap on there!¨ What it ammounts to is me feeling like I will go crazy if I hear Eric Clapton singing about his Father´s Eye´s or that horrid ¨Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?¨ song again.

In this picture you will find a man who sharpens knives using a bicycle type contraption on the street. It seems he goes around to the restaurants and does their knives.

and this other picture is of me doing what a lot of people do around here almost all the time - squinting! Yes, squinting into the powerful light of the midday sun. I´ve never seen the like. You practically need to put sunblock on at night up here! If you have light complexion and do not put on sunblock and spend more than a half hour in this intense low-ozone filtered high-altitude sun, you will get a skiers sunburn that somehow gets under your chin and eyebrows like you spent the day on a glacier! It´s amazing white burning light, but it does really feel nice when it breaks through the frequent passing rainclouds. It is an excercise in extremes and it makes everyone, tourists and locals alike have this permanent Dirty Harry / Marlborough Man expression on their face, that is, unless you want to be the only one in town wearing sunglasses, which apart from military badasses, don´t seem to be that popular amongst the locals.

Up UP up...

2010-02-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

We are heading up and more up to the area known as the ALTIPLANO tomorrow. It´s hard to imagine people living any higher up than this much less giant cities and lakes and islands in the lakes with towns on them! We shall see what this is all about when we get to the peruvian town of Puno near the Bolivian border.

1 Day in Ollantaytambo

2010-02-22T16:29:00.000-08:00

We caught a couple of busses out of town this week and headed for the small town of Ollantaytambo for a night. It was well worth the journey! The bus ride snaked it´s way through what is known to Ancient Incans, Locals, and tourists alike as ¨The Sacred Valley¨. This is the valley where Machu Picchu and a whole host of other very interesting Ican cities were (and still are) located. It´s quite lush, a little warmer than Cusco and at times dryer. Cusco and this valley are considered the heart of the Incan empire and the whole place is littered with ruin sites and towns that still boast buildings, aquaducts, and walls of Incan heritage, probably a few people too.

The river Urubamba lays at it´s bottom and it´s this river that is responsible for raging over the rails and washing out all access to Machu Picchu. While this is lame, there are tons of other places to go here. Ollantaytambo was particularly interesting because the town itself is a former Incan settlement so the walls of many buildings and carless streets and aquaducts which guide a small stream throughout it´s fields and streets are all very very old. And as we have learned from places like Rome, Cairo, Bethlehem, etc... Old is good. Old is interesting. These cities are some of North Americas oldest continuously inhabited settlements and if you were as lucky as we were to settle there ourselves for a night, you´d know why. Ollantaytambo is a stunning little place at the juncture of two very deep valleys and surrounded by dryish peaks with a giant Incan Fortification/Ceremonial centre stepping it´s way up the mountainside.

It´s been raining pretty much every day since we got here, but it usually peters out and gets sunny by 10am, this day was drizzly though and while I was warm in my new alpaca sweater, we got soaked. It sure was fun though. It took us a few hours to exhaust this site and the next day we went up the other side of the river, where there are non-paying unregulated ruins as well.

Check these out! Incan water fountains, that still work. The whole area was crisscrossed with these little ingenious channels that I guess were the way that incans transported water around the area.

This is apparently a fort where occured one of the few succesful battles the Incans had against the Spanish. They held them off here on these battlements after retreating from Cusco. Crazy times. It´s hard to imagine rocks, arrows, and spears being chucked off these terraces at armoured spanish horsemen, but that´s what happened.

The vegetation up here on these dry mountainsides was practically as interesting as the fortress itself. Because it´s the rainy season the mountainsides were lush with undergrowth. Cacti, Maguey, crazy looking air plants, and wild flowers of many varieties were in full bloom.

This little town was really looking quite slow. There was evidence of some washout from the extreme rains and the river was swollen and roaring with debris and the color of chocolate milk, pretty dangerous looking. However, people here seemed to be carrying on as usual. The bridge to the ruins had been repaired and only really noticeable thing was the emptyness of all the businesses in town. Practically every restaurant we´ve been in, we´ve been the only people. And that goes for Cusco as well. It seems the dropoff in tourism from Machu Picchu´s closing and the sensationalist articles in newpapers may hurt the region more than any natural disasters. It´s been a bit wet and muddy from place to place, but nothing like we expected from reading the papers on the coast. The obsession with Machu Picchu is funny actually. These ruins offered a practically parallel experience from my standpoint. Points of interest for tourists become like pilgrimages over time and people can become a bit crazy I think. It´s like waiting for hours in the rain to catch a glimpse of your favourite movie star. Nonetheless, this place warrants a visit. I suggest staying a few days and chilling-out and walking the hills to some other more remote sites around here that I read about but didn´t get to. The people in this small place are friendly and there is pretty much everything here a vacationer could want. These giant stones were under construction when the Spaniards came and destroyed everything. They were quarried from a site about 5kms away! I can´t imagine how much work that would have been, but I guess as we have learned from other civilizations in those times, rock hauling was a serious priority and when you´re a king, it´s never hard to find haulers.

This was a Sapo (frog) game that they had at our hostel and it´s aparantly a popular Peruvian pastime. People throw brass coins and try to score points in certain holes with the top score being in the frogs mouth.

This is what the ¨streets¨ of Ollantaytambo are like. I don´t think they´ve changed much since the olden times, but when we hiked up the hills and past some terraced gardens you could see over the high walls into peoples little yards and houses. Some were quite old-fashioned with hog-wallows, veggie plots and chicken coops while others had manicured flower gardens. I felt like I was looking down on some old-world europe village.

We are finally in Cusco. - no kidding this time.

2010-02-19T17:33:00.000-08:00

Well, we arrived by super-fast and comfy jetliner to Cusco the other day and now that we´ve had a chance to wander around for about three days I can safely say it´s a great place. We are lucky actually in that because of the closing of Machu Picchu and the fact that this is the low season, there are not giant busloads of tourists parading throughout the town and it has a fairly mellow and relaxed feel. You only need to glance at the huge offering of four star hotels, fancy restaurants, numerous artisan markets, and throngs of touts, souvenir stalls, and sellers of woven crafts to know that the supply right now far outstrips the demand and I´m sure in high season with the star attraction open for business, this place is pretty packed. Right now you´d never know that you were in South Americas most visited town. People here seem to be taking the bad turn of events in stride though and the town (the touristy parts anyway) has little evidence of the disastrous floods we´d read about in Lima. The previous photos with us smiling over Machu Picchu are, of course, fakes. A close inspection would reveal that we posed in front of a mural while staying in Lima. Abundant tourist trade has it´s upside as well. This is one of the only places that we´ve had a choice between many vegetarian places to eat and other, more gringo, kinds of food. I actually expected more McDonalds and Planet Hollywood kind of offerings, but Cusco is surprisingly small-scale so far.

We bumped into this guy on our way back from the ruins of Saqsaywayman which proudly tower above the city. Llamas abound here of course, and generally there are a few people in traditional dress around and next to them all too happy to pose for a pic for a few Soles tip of course. This guy seemed to have lost his way somewhere and was wandering the narrow cobbled streets sans herder.

Here is a picture of one small, almost perfectly cut little stone among thousands that were piled into the amazing ramparts of the Saqsaywayman fortress above the city. This distictive Stone-masonry is definitely one of the most impressive Incan accomplishments. It´s ubiquitous by now of course, but it´s still impressive by current days standards. As you can imagine I was just staring at this stone and thinking, ¨I´m impressed¨, and then I took a picture.

Never mind the ruins though, Cusco is a artifact unto itself! Many churches and buildings, roads, sewers and other infrastructure in Cusco was built by the Incas, and is still being used today. As you ply Cusco´s narrow, cobbled streets there are reminders of the city´s ancient past all over the place. Of course, I wasn´t there so there isn´t much to be reminded of accept some of the stuff that we saw in the Museum today which was

stuff like mummies which were paraded around and were fed and treated like kings because that´s what they were; dead kings who still get to rule the roost after death. So there was a museum with screaming mummies and other artifacts from the area.

These are the battlements of the fort above the city where the retreating Incans gave the Spanish conquerors a serious run for their money. Bloody battles ensued and finally the Incans capitulated. Only the rocks remain. Well, and their ancestors of course who still inhabit this great city way up in the Andes, llamas and all. The books don´t lie. This place is a gem in mine too.

We go the high-way but not the highway.

2010-02-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

We are leaving for Cusco Tomorrow, by plane. What that means is that we won´t have to take a 20hr long journey on the roads of danger which may be closed, but will coast over it all in the sky at fairly great expense as we discovered that while there are deals-o-plenty for Peruvians to fly to Cusco for the weekend, they are not open to foreigners. Lame. But, well, them´s the rules and we tried to get around them, but it could not be done so we paid full tourist prices for our tickets. WE are STILL in Lima and while we have not exhausted it´s charms, we are ready to move on at any rate. The sky is hot and sunny pretty much every day and the streets are full of bustle and hustle. Nothing much new to add actually. We are beginning to feel more at home here. We know what places we like. It´s nice. It suddenly seems like Vancouver has erupted into Olympic frenzy as expected, complete with protests and arrests etc... Probably no one has time to check the news on this page. Too busy dodging rubber bullets! These are just another few spare images of the return journey to Lima from Ayacucho. We desperately wanted to jump off the bus and just walk in these Elysian fields of uber-green grass and puffy clouds but we never did figure out how to get here.

Tomorrow we will be in Cusco so I will hopefully have more to say. One strange thing we´ve noticed about Lima is the prevalence of English 90´s top 40 hits. There is noticeably less salsa and cumbia playing in restaurants and bars than in Ecuador. It seems that 90´s pop hits from the USA and Canada are pretty En-Vogue (just to add a little 90´s nostalgia to the blog). Lot´s of really bad stuff like Nickelback, that horrid ¨where have all the cowboys gone?¨ song, and onehitwonders like Dido, who did something with Eminem to her fame, we recalled. Popular music is kind of like Whack-a-Mole I guess. You hammer it down somewhere and up it pops in some other country. Wait! I hear some Cuban Son being played outside. I guess it´s still Latin America after all!

Doubling Back

2010-02-13T17:34:00.000-08:00

We are back in Lima from Ayacucho despite the fact that Ayacucho is physically closer to Cusco and hence the altiplano of Bolivia and Lake Titicaca which is our next phase of travel, the roads in-between are dirt, scary, and have a good chance of being washed out. The bus from Ayacucho to Cusco takes 20 hours! So we decided to come back to Lima and plan our next move from here. We are trying to find out if flying to cusco won´t be too expensive. It seems this is what many people do rather than chance the rains.

Finally there!

2010-02-12T14:10:00.001-08:00

Finally there!, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

Here´s another view of this majestic place! And us in the middle of it!

Finally Made it!

2010-02-12T14:02:00.001-08:00

Finally Made it!, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

Well. We finally got to Machu Piccu! hehe. Yeah, it's supposed to be closed, but there's nothing a few Soles placed in the right palm and a helicopter ride or two can accomplish. It's such a breathtaking place. Nothing can really match the experience of seeing the real thing with your own eyes! Especially when there's no one else around to share it with. Breathtaking...

Fiesta!

2010-02-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

It´s carnival week here in Ayacucho and that means lots of processions and bands and stuff going on in the street. Actually, there have been processions in many andean towns during the months of January and February. It´s kind of fun accept for the one yesterday that was a funeral procession which was more serious. We are awoken each morning and sometimes the middle of the night to the sound of andean flutes, horns and drums parading the streets which is why I still don´t have any photos of said processions, we are usually sleeping and not parading around. We did have a nice night in the park last night. Where we just sat for awhile and chilled out on a bench and watched the youths of Ayacucho hangout. Actually the people of this town are quite out and about. It seems every night there are throngs of people down in the square walking about with kids and socializing etc... People seeem to go for Chicken at night in Peru. Roast chicken is the typical cena meal maybe washed down with a few beers. We are trying to hang out here a bit and study some of the Spanish notes we got during our brief but intense classes. It´s a bit hard to study on the road when you´ve got to move on all the time.

Here´s a small square we walked to yesterday which was full of little artisan shops. Apparently this is the place to buy straight from the producers and there was some amazing craftsmanship on display. Many rugs with agaraian themes and meanings. Rugs that tell stories all hand woven from wool or Alpaca. There was of course a lot of other neat stuff too, but we are constantly battling the wanting of trinkets and stuff with the reality of weight. Backpack weight is a big issue when backpacking as you can imagine. We end up bantering and negotiating quite a bit about who carries what and who´s carrying more and all that. Every kilo counts when you´ve got to lug your pack around in the heat or heave the whole thing onto your lap on a chicken bus that bounces along some dusty road. Fortunately we´ve been able to travel by fancy bus and taxis when we´re not in the mood for roughing it so the question of weight hasn´t been too intense or contencious for that matter, which is good but I won´t surprised if I end up with some giant ceramic bull and a rug under my arm by the end of this crusade.

Most peruvian towns seem to have legions of moto-taxis to get you around. The convenience and price is great but the pollution from their little two-stroke engines isn´t. That said we´ve been using them pretty unsparingly.

We´ve been eating quite a few of these in the mornings with jam and butter. Chaplas they are called and delicious they are! They are puffed-up like pitas and a little sweeter and a little gummier than pitas but very similar. I seem to be getting a lot of vista type pictures and many pictures of food. As usual I miss out on the picture perfect moments because I´m just not obnoxious enough to whip out the camera when there´s interesting stuff going on like five old women in the market hacking up a giant side of meat while a giant, furry hound looks on from down below anticipating scraps or drippings. There is a lot going on in this busy little place, but I haven´t yet been able to photogistically capture the total Vibe yet. It´s hard. We are also constantly vigilant here as there is a tradition during this time of year for people to throw water buckets and water balloons on passers-by and Gringos are no exception. We have been hit a couple of times already, and there have been many missed attempts. Yesterday three little girls chased us down the street loaded with balloons. They pegged us in the end. It´s quite fun, but we also don´t want to be soaked every day so there´s a bit of strategy involved. Now we know the spots and times when water thrower people are most likely to lurk. Cuenca Ecuador was a little more daunting as most attacks were drive-by style and you could not anticipate as easily. It makes the day interesting at any rate. Anyone want to play ´hit the gringo´? hehe...

Ayacucho

2010-02-09T14:09:00.000-08:00

We went to Trujillo and saw the slowly melting remnants of what once was the worlds biggest Adobe city. Over a hundred thousand people lived here at the site of Chan Chan before the rise of the Incas and all were gone by the time Columbus discovered the americas. It´s kind of mind-boggling. Additionally, there are these Incan dogs that have no fur and are black. A remnant of this breed was playing the waiting game for snacks outside the Chan Chan concession and we had to take some photos home. Don´t you want one of these guys for a pet?

We have left Lima for a few days after eating some amazing ceviche. Lunch is the big meal of the day here and ceviche and pisco sours are the name of the game at this busy local place on a hectic Friday afternoon. The band was in full swing when we arrived at 3 o-clock and we wasted no time getting the ceviche of the day. Yes, it comes with it´s own small crab. We also discovered people lined up at this place in Miraflores that makes amazing cremoladas and has these cookies called alfajores that are basically amazing velvety shortbread with caramel in between - yummer-do!.

Here´s the sunset of Miraflores where people make-out and make-up. Also a lot of people like to para glide here.

All in all I can say that Lima is a great city to get to know. It´s pretty hectic and crazy at times and in places, but it has many faces and the food is amazing. There is street food a plenty as well.

This collection of comedors next to our bus station in the centro had hot herb drinks and chicken with chicken and chicken and rice.

Just a little of the amazing scenery on the way to Ayacucho

Some locals near Ayacucho

Another 9 hour bus ride down the desert coast and up through some amazing countryside has brought us to the quaint little city of Ayacucho. We thought it might be a better idea to visit this place as Cusco is completely swamped in rain these days and we seem to be getting lucky with the weather so far. The ride up here on the bus was by far one of the most amazing drives I have ever been on. At first you climb up and up through giant mountains with hard and dry cliffs to high plains dotted with herds of Alpaca and sheep.

Then we descended slightly through some of the most amazing terrain. High walls of rock jut out of the valley with sharp and smooth angles like massive folding screens. The valley floor was riddled with boulders of various sizes, sparkling little rivers and ultra green grass. It was very surreal. My bus window shots do not do it justice.

Ayacucho is a nice town of around 170 thousand people and has a quiet industriousness to it. There are a lot of churches and small artisan shops that sell ceramics and weavings of high quality. The main square is pleasant and people here are pretty outgoing and seem to like their city. Our guidebook calls this part of Peru, ¨the heart of Peru¨ and I can get a small idea of what they are talking about. Here is a shot of our little hostel that we are staying at.

Ayacucho view

cocoa tea and cookie

Mostly it´s just nice to be somewhere where the pace is a little more laid back and you can relax back and have one of these to help quash the high altitude headaches and give you extra energy for the day ahead. Cocoa leaf tea! Well having said that I am feeling a moist breeze on my arm and can see outside the open door of this internet cafe that there is a nasty storm boiling off in the distance. Maybe I spoke too soon. I will post again homies! Hope all is well where you are.

Genki des Ka?

2010-02-06T18:49:00.000-08:00

Another tidbit that I´ll add while I´m waiting for hayley to finish talking to her father in the telephone cabin is that there is a noticeable Japanese population here in Peru. There are also part-Japanese people like me! I knew for sometime that there were people of Japanese descent living here, but I was surprised at how many. The most notorious ex-pat being the disgraced former President Fujimori. Upon entering Peru through the north (through a wiley, dusty, unruley and relatively bleak border city packed full of hustlers and rustlers) I was surprised to see giant ad banners painted along factoy walls with the slogan ¨free fujimori¨ and ¨Fujimori innocent!!¨. It would appear he still has big support here from some. Hayley sat next to an interesting and rather extravagant woman on the bus from Trujillo who declared that she was part Japanese, Italian and Spanish blooded, (not the woman pictured) whatever that means. The quality of the seafood here is good enough that I can see why Japanese people decided to stay. Unfortunately this hasn´t translated into any kind of preferential treatment for me. Maybe half helpings don´t count hehe. There is also a chinatown in Lima that we tried to find but got distracted with the cream filled churros. We actually get waylaid quite a bit by the desire to eat something rather than dwell over some ruins or mummy or something. Hopefully we can see some ruins in Ayacucho of some kind. I hear it´s not ruin-land like Cusco, but ruins are overrated anyway. Maybe I´m just trying to make myself feel better about not getting to Machu Picchu. Funnily enough we have been to Ecuador without seeing the Galapagos Islands and now we will have been to Cusco without seeing Machu Picchu. Well, tomorrow we will ascend yet again into the mountains and from what I hear, things may get a bit chilly from there on in. I can finally use the wool socks and long sleeved shirts I´ve been lugging around in anticipation for the last weeks - but lugging things around in anticipation is what travelling is all about I guess. More snapshots to come...

More Stuff

2010-02-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

Well here we are back in Vancouver just looking out our window... Actually, no we are currently in Lima, Peru and it´s one of our favourite places so far. Wow! It´s quite crazy and huge and fun, hot, pretty, sad and surprising. People are relatively friendly and maybe a bit more outgoing than in other parts of Peru that we know so far anyway. It´s a giant place. It seems people have poured in here from all parts of Peru. Getting around is pretty crazy. There isn´t really any central, easy to use transit system so we´ve been mostly cabbing it around, but we´re currently staying in the trendy, wealthy Miraflores district which is really comfortable and safe and beautiful. Our hostel is merely a block from the flat expanse of the Pacific ocean.

One of the big treats in Lima so far has been the food. Actually the food all the way from Ecuador to here has been pretty good and at times amazing. Especially the seafoods. This is an authentic spanish churro stall that we discovered downtown. Imagine fresh, hot out of a giant copper pot cream-filled churros. We´ve learned that you need to look around at where and what the locals are lining up for and simply make the line to see what all the fuss is about. Generally, the fuss is about something and something good!

Dowtown has a crazy busy feel and at times it feels as if it´s coming apart at the seams. If you venture off the well-beaten track, you immediatley see the more unseemly side of Lima. Clogged dark streets with hawkers of everything, dusty potholes, carts of produce and discount sneaker shops stretch into the dusky, smoggy distance. The traffic is practically un-regulated (there are scant traffic lights), but somehow, through honking and shunting and brute jostling, Limas clogged arteries flow.

The dowtown area has some handsome plazas and fountains and a few parks. Since arriving in Peru we´ve been sampling some of the local beverages as well. Pisco sours are strong and delicious and refreshing but don´t overdo it. The interesting thing is that people drink this one often just before a big ceviche lunch. Woah. And I´m supposed to present myself back at work after that? I will try to post some catch-up stuff. But basically we´ve been making our way down the Peruvian coast. We learned that we won´t be able to go up to Machu Picchu. It´s totally rained-out and the mountains are riddled with mudslides and basically a lot of people are flooded out and miserable. We are not sure if we want to be in the middle of that, but we´ll see how things shape up after this week. Hmmm... Uh, can´t think of more to say today. We´ll play catch up later.

Plodding on the Blog

2010-02-03T13:47:00.000-08:00

I´m a clodding and plodding along on the blogging but as you can imagine it´s just what I´m able to do with the limited time I have in the cyber cafes of Peru. I´ve no time for photos today, but I just wanted to instruct my readers that if you scroll down to the end of the blog you may be able to check the archives of my blog to find posts from earlier in our trip as there is only so much space dedicated and I´m no good at editing HTML. I just realized that this version of IE isn´t doing the same kind of formatting that Firefox does so the sidebar will either be at the end or at the beginning. ¿Entiendes? Stay tuned for more soon.

Looking back over the last few weeks

2010-01-27T17:14:00.000-08:00

Well even though we are now in Peru and currently hanging out for the night in a bustling little beach surf town full of Peruvian vacationers, I am beating the heat by taking an opportunity to post some pics from the past few weeks. Well this is a church in the beautiful little town of Cuenca that was somehow perfectly blessed with this godlight on our afternoon walk to work off some food we ate. I guess god must shine his light more often in Towns with a church every three blocks.

In Quito we went to this amazing ice cream place where you can get ice creams made the same way they have been since the 1700´s or something like that, in giant copper pots. The Heladeria San Agustine creams were really good but not like regular ice cream, more like a fusion of ice cream and slushie, but I shouldn´t even mention the 7-11 travesty in the same uh, webpage

These are from out little side jaunt to Baños a little way away from Quito. I think I already posted some Volcano pictures? I thought I should include this nice one to show the deepness of the valley and the lushness of the forest. For some reason there were a number of places in town that sold tour packages on 4-wheeled 4-track off road go carty things that buzzed down the streets. All over the place these guys stand in doorways pulling taffy. Just hauling on it with their bare hands over wooden hooks. We tried a bit, but it was pretty salty and hard. I was really worried that it was going to pull out my brand new fillings - a sort of reverse destistry by way of sugar over hook pulling.

When you descend, and that´s what you do, down down to the coast you go through zones and zones of different vegetaton. It´s very beautiful and striking and a little freaky rolling at crazy speeds down washed out roads and around switchbacks down through cloud forests until you pop out in harshly tropical, sweaty jungle. I didn´t really get a lot of great shots as we were on the inside side of the bus most of the time but as a sidebar that man in shilouette with the ball cap and a few other of us passengers ended up getting stranded in some woebegotten bus terminal due to a protest and a closed road and we ended up going on a little roundabout trek together by land and sea to get to our destination! At each juncture we would confer with eachother the best way for us to go which was no small feat in itself, but all went well... This is on the carratera to the coast. Very hot and jungly here. Lots of little pueblitos on the side of the road with all kinds of ramshackle shacks and little comedors (small restaurants). Seems like people have less money down in the jungly lands, but that´s just my bus-whizzing-by heresay. On one note I thought this was a creative way of keeping people from driving on the brand-new blacktop as they were still working on it. Screw the fancy lights and traffic herders just throw a few thousand giant tire busting rocks on there.

This is the bustling big city of Guayaquil. And this picture if fairly indicative of the general feel. It was hazy and dark from the greyness of it´s towers and the smoggy streets, but to be fair it was a little overcast. It bustles and it hustles! Guayaquil is Ecuador´s biggest city and while it has some interesting aspects, it felt a bit rough and tough as well. Safe neighborhoods had a distinct ¨gated¨ vibe with security zones at night and dark hazy rolled-down sidestreets that might only be lit by one orange streetlamp and a few dim flourescent tubes. Not many smiles here and with the size of it´s sprawling slums I can see why. We were on our way to Canoa which proved to be pretty nice as they go.

Canoa is a small fishing and surf town north of Bahia that has a bevy of hotels and hostels where fishermen still ply their trade from small boats they launch themselves over the long flat beach every day. It was similar to the town I´m in right now, but way less crowded and built up. We did find a place that made good coffee and pancakes though. I liked it. Especially the Japanese run bakery cyber cafe. As you can see it looks a bit like Tofino, accept that water is the temperature of a bath!

This picture is from a weird hotel we stayed at in Bahia on our way to Canoa and it´s about all I can say about this little hub of a place. The people were a bit cold there. I think it was low season for them and things seemed pretty slow. Many people glared at us from hammoks, but we did enjoy the heat after the relative briskness of Quito.

Now back to my favourite! Cuenca! WE stayed here for a week. (the church at the top of this entry is the first cuenca picture.)

The image of the weird boys face is a drawing Hayley did of me! I´m not sure if I should be flattered or not. I do look a bit younger and rather more like some animee character, but with 5-0-clock shadow. These images are of a woman´s resource centre and an example of some of the amazing breakfasts that we are having

Salero Tipica

2010-01-24T10:25:00.001-08:00

Salero Tipica, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

Este es el salero muy tipica de los comedors en Ecuador. Nosotros comimos en Quito comida tipica de los almuerzos del Gente de Quito. Mas rara fue el plato Chaulafan que es de China pero muy popular con los Ecuatorianos. Tiene salsa Soy y mariscos mexclado con carne y verduras.

Into Cuenca and out of Cuenca

2010-01-24T09:48:00.002-08:00

we´re in Cuenca and have just completed a week of Spanish classes where I got some much needed review of my verbs etc. and Hayley was introduced to the past tense! We paid for a week each of spanish classes with a private teacher! Well worth it. The teachers here are quite good and the hourly rates are very cheap. Unheard-of really for the skills of the teachers. We are having a really good time here. The city is a beautiful and colonial surrounded by mountains and up in the high andes. It´s quite a bit safer and more laid back than Quito and a little warmer. There are lots of Americans and foreigners here. Indeed they seem to almost own the town. Despite this, the town retains own identity and people are friendly. The food is very good here by our standards. There is international cuisine and very good traditional Ecuadorian food. I did try some roast guinea pig which was not-surprisingly delicious with a little hot salsa. It resembles rabhit, in flavor. There are also yogurt stands all over the place where you can buy uh, yogurt and fruit blended with yogurt and giant goblets of fresh tropical fruit drenched in yogurt. In the mornings we´ve been going to this cafe that sells fresh fruit and yogurt and pancakes. We buy an order of each and top the pancakes with the fruit and yogurt. Yogurt! Woah, it´s really good. Yesterday we went to a public market that was epic in it´s selection of foo0dstuffs; a testimony to the wealth of the countries breadbasket/s. It was multi-floored and in addition to the giant meat and fruit/veggie sections there was an ample fresh fish section and an isle dedicated entirely to fresh herbs and medicinal flowers and roots etc... Here a Shamana will cleanse your soul with a little ceremony that culminates with breaking an egg and reading the yolks, etc. to see if bad energy has entered your soul. I got a little scared and kept my distance. I´m not sure if I avoid this kind of thing (I am also kind of creeped out by Tarot - I keep distance between me and that guy outside Tio Pepe´s on Commercial Drive in Vancouver) because I don´t believe in it or because I don´t want to believe in it, but it was pretty interesting too see. Uh, we are leaving tomorrow for the upper top coast of Peru, so it´s with a little sadness that we leave Ecuador behind but it{s been an amazing trip so far. Ecuador was a really big surprise in many ways. It´s much more diverse and interesting than I thought it would be and the people as I have said before are quite friendly. So far this little city has been the highlight of our trip here.

Advertising Advice needed

2010-01-24T09:48:00.001-08:00

Advertising Advice needed, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

It´s a low blow to make fun of crazy crap you see on the street in foreign countries, but this one really made me think about the dying art of studio photography and the function of photography in general in different places. Additionally, my blows are often low. There has to be a little room for this in my blog.

New years Turkey with garnish

2010-01-16T14:07:00.001-08:00

New years Turkey with garnish, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

I know this comes a little late but Feliz Nuevo Año por 2010 to all my family and homies in Canada and USA y mis amigos de Mexico tambien! Aint no turkey like a NYE Quiteño turkey!

cathedral door

2010-01-16T13:49:00.001-08:00

cathedral door, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

There is some really nice artwork in a few of the churches in Quito and some of the other towns. This was from a cathedral in Quito. As always cherubs figure big.

Why I don´t get Callbacks

2010-01-16T13:31:00.001-08:00

WoodenHorsey, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

This is a picture I would like to entitle, ¨Why I don´t get Callbacks¨ Hayley took it of me fooling around at a park which looks down over Quito, but I think the look on my face especially if you look closely says it all.

Waterfall in Banos

2010-01-16T13:16:00.001-08:00

Waterfall in Banos, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

This is the waterfall on the far side of Baños that comes right off the side of the mountain, through a few pools and then straight through a clothes washing area that looks like it´s a few hundred years old where people (read women) are busy scraping clothes clean on the stones. We went to a hot springs here which was interesting. Very interesting. ¨Rustic¨ is the word I´d use. Maybe there are more rustic natural pools around the world but this pool we went to had many people crammed in together as it was the only really hot one so it was kinda like taking a bath with a whole gang of Strangers. Hot water percolated up through the cement on the floor and the perforations where the water was coming through were boiling hot so you had to watch your step. The co-ed pre and post dip shower was pretty interesting if not altogether sanitary feeling. I´m not sure if Hayley would call bug-eyed stares interesting though. It was refreshing though and the water was so cloudy with minerals that I´m sure we got some rejuvination from them.

More Baños

2010-01-14T14:22:00.001-08:00

IMG_2732, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

Here´s another view of the town.

Smoking Volcano

2010-01-14T14:20:00.001-08:00

Smoking Volcano, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

We are on the road to Baños which is near to Quito nestled deep in the shadow of a valley of a gigantic smoking volano. See photo for proof I was there. This is the volcan Tungruahua which was spouting vigorously enough to scare everyone off the mountain a few years back, but slowly people have trickled back as it hasn´t erupted yet. Now it´s a tourist attraction despite the fact it hasn´t been settled weather or not it might blow someday soon. Besides the beauty and awesomeness of a smoking volcano, Baños is really amazingly beautiful and has hot springs to boot. We stayed at a very comfy hostel and ate giant breakfasts and admired the small towns quaint streets. There is a challanging set of stairs that climb the steep jungly slopes up the side of the mountain to a statue of GOD that overlooks the whole place. We went up there, saw him but had to run down to catch a bus but we wished we´d had a few more days to go on a longer hike further up the ridge onto a plateau where there is a little hamlet with farms and cows and other stuff like that. Next time tunguahua unless you haven´t destroyed everything by then - hope not.

Nescafe Ritual

2010-01-14T14:06:00.001-08:00

Nescafe Ritual, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

In Ecuador it is difficult to find a brewed cup of coffee. Most people drink the crystals. Needless to say, I´m addicted to coffee and, like addicts of other stimulants, I´ll migrate to whatever is availiable and resembles coffee if that´s all there is which means I´ve been drinking a lot of Nescafe. Incidentally there is a Nescafe skyscraper in Guayaquil so it seems I´m not the only one. Strangely, there are some old, and classy buildings in Quito that are traditional and old style where you order a Humitas (sweet corn tamale) and sit with a fresh brewed cup of coffee. We went to a place that looked like it had been there for a century and sat down. On the table there were some napkins, sugar and a small crystal bottle of black liquid. I guess because I eat a lot of Chinese food it registered in my peripheral vision as a soy sauce bottle. We ordered coffees and were quickly served two cups of hot water with a cup of hot milk. After a few puzzled moments passed I asked about when our coffee was going to arrive. The server just gestured to the bottle of black liquid which after mixing it with my hot water and milk turned out to be some of the finest Nescafe concentrate I´ve ever had. We are in Cuenca now and have found a place with real brewed coffee but it´s interesting that I was finally starting to develop a taste for the stuff when I was finally able to get the real thing. Nescafe! Its not that bad!

Old Town Quito

2010-01-14T13:46:00.001-08:00

Old Town Quito, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

This is a large street in Old Town Quito. The sun really cooks you this high up. The old colonial buildings and mountains in the background sum up the flavor of Quito.

Well that kinda worked.

2010-01-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

Now we are still in Canoa. It is Hayleys birthday and it is raining. It is actually kinda pouring. The sandy streets are now filled with mud and many people are waiting under the awning of the corner store accross the street for the bus which just shot past without picking up anyone. This must be the beginning of the rainy season in Ecuador. By the looks of things I´m going to be extremely wet.

Photo Test

2010-01-10T14:12:00.001-08:00

IMG_2658, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

Hi this is just a test to see if photos can work. Incidentally, this is Quito in the Old Town just as thesun was rising on our first morning. The Hostel we were staying at had a great patio with a sprawling view. Nice to sip your morning cup to this.

Dias de calor, Noches calientes, Perros calientes de la Playa

2010-01-09T14:08:00.000-08:00

OK, we are a few days in at the beach now and our cod-fillets are looking a little more cocidos. The Ocean is amazing here. People are pretty nice at times here. Like a lot of places where small handsome fishing villages have been changed into pseudo-resort like places with a bevy of hotels and restaurants and cabana bars, the people have a fairly easy-going demeanor but it´s hard to smile all the time for the customers. Not everyone is super-psyched to be doling out smoothies for crappy pay to tourists all day we´ve noticed... in between beers and fish dinners that is. Que supresa. I´m not gonna pretend there´s too much difference between me and the rest of the folks visiting here, but that said, it has spread a few dollars around this dry, pretty little town. There´s a few amenities and water and electricity that seems to cut out a few times a day, but overall the people here seem tolerant of the tourist trade. Water is in very short supply so hopefully, no megalith hotels will open up. Right now there is a drought so people are a little apprehensive about water wasting. We will venture to Cuenca Ecuador in a few days and then, we can dutifully pack our swimming trunks away for awhile. Maybe for until we return as we head onwards and upwards to Peru climes and climbs and into Boliva by March at the very least!

We are finally off!

2010-01-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

The amazing city of Quito

Well. To be honest I can hardly believe it. We are finally in Ecuador. It´s been quite the trip. We have spent a few amazing days in the bustling city of Quito Ecuador which is pretty unique pricipally that it´s in Ecuador, but it´s also almost 4000 metres higher than Vancouver or sea level so the airs thin and the clouds roll over it´s verdent green hillsides as if they´re in time lapse. No, I haven´t licked any mind altering toads nor drank too many chelas, es verdad me amis! We spent New Years Eve at our hostel and the cozy, cobbled avenue outside, burning old man effigies and jumping through the flames, not to mention a little inpromptu dance lesson in Quiteno style cumbia dancing from the people who owned the hostel accross the road. We bought some soap from them as we had nothing the first night in town because American Airlines had ¨misplaced¨ our bags somewhere between Miami and L.A. I hear a lot of things get misplaced between there. Quito is sort of rolled out like a taco between volcanoe´s steep hillsides and this makes it dramatic. In the old-town which is really the only part of town that bears mention, the streets are narrow and, well, old. Very old. Old enough for UNESCO to give it the big thumbs-up for the world heritage site! I can hear vancouver super-mayor McGregor Robinson Crusoe clacking-out an official request to UNESCO for the DTES in Vancouver as I write this, but his post-olympic hopes would be dashed if he came to Quito and scoped the competish. Old customs, old people, heritage colonial buildings and narrow streets and stairways climb the mountainsides like some detailed escher drawing.

residences near the sea with shrimp ponds behind

We have now left Quito and are on the road and down by the sea! The temps are a groggy 30 plus degrees and we are unabashadly sporting sport shorts and white cod-fillet stomaches around this long flat stretch of beach. I really want to post some pics but untils I figure out how to plug-in the digi-cam into the cyber-cafe computadoras, it´s going to be ASCII only homies!

When the Fit Hits the Shan this is where I'm running...

2009-11-18T23:26:00.000-08:00

I had never actually been to an intentional community before but this summer I went to one down near Portland, Oregon with my Gal and we had an awesome time! We weren't exactly staying in an intentional community, but we were staying at a kind of retreat which was run by members of an intentional community that was also attached to it called Breitenbush Hot Springs. Now this was a real hippie retreat kind of place where you pay to play in the relaxing and rejuvenating thermal waters of the deep woods. Clothing was optional and most people seemed to be choosing the "non-optional" option but with a certain amount of modesty. Meals were all veggie with vegan options and the atmosphere was very down to earth and not rife with any ingratiating behavior nor were there types of people who expected that kind of experience; no towelboys, no pillow mints. However the place was totally clean and well-run and generally, the opposite of what you'd expect from hippies in today's world. I was beginning to think maybe these people aren't hippies at all, but some kind of neo-hippie hybrid. They didn't allow alcohol or drugs on site which I suppose is pretty understandable because, well, it's a retreat where a lot of people go to clean-up or detox or whatever. I guess that's what retreats are for - getting away from all the nuts stuff that we don't like about where we live and work. I guess I can't find fault with that - yet. What was startling about the place actually, was how well-organized it seemed. Basically, the heart of the place is a three story lodge with several communal rooms and a large dining hall and another building which houses a kitchen. There was a giant industrial composter. There was a run-of-river power plant. There was a geo-thermal heating system! These people had really done their homework not to mention tapping into some deep pockets. This complex is surrounded by numerous "natural style" concrete and rock pools and some nice stone tiled tubs full of naturally hot clean mineral water that bubbles up through crevices deep in the earth. I don't have a lot of photographs of the pools obviously because usually there were a few people around and usually they were naked. If you wanted the fully pampered experience you could rent a small cabin with beds and a bathroom, but there are communal bathrooms which are very clean and sufficient. If you camp, like we did, you can get away with paying only 56 bucks a night and that included 3 big veggie meals and full 24hr access to the hot springs and sauna. It's pretty relaxing and luxurious.

This was the amazing steam sauna which was ingeniously positioned right over a super-hot geyser that continuously gushed hot steam up through crevices in the floor.

I don't think I've ever been anywhere as relaxing as this place, and I've been to some pretty relaxing places. Now I know why so many people like to bag-out at one of these spa-retreat kind of places. Not only are the grounds of the retreat nice, but there are numerous places around to go on little day hikes or short walks. The area is beautiful as it is nestled deep in the Willamete National Forest and on the banks of the Breitenbush river. We did walk through the area across the creek where many of the people who work in the hot springs live and it seemed like a nice place with a close knit and communal structure. People had seperate dwellings and they even got to share their own hot springs pools. All in all it seemed fairly idyllic or at least leaning that way. Living so close to people and so inter-meshed with everyone's goals can be challenging. Most of the people I know who've lived in co-ops usually do because they can't afford to do things on their own or at least don't want to pay for the luxury. I imagine more and more people will be turning to these kinds of solutions as times get tougher. Maybe this seems ominous, but I don't hear anyone talking about how times are going to get easier in the next 50 years, so it's best to look at positive things that may come of it I guess... Co-op or communally-minded life isn't for everyone though and possibly not for me, but it's nice to see that someone's doing it somewhat successfully. Maybe if the sh*t does hit the fan we'll all find ourselves rolling our luggage up some logging road looking for people like this.

Hot BOX

2009-07-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

My apartment is so hot that I think my plants are dying of heat exhaustion. It's that time of year where in Vancouver the summer starts in earnest. Which is good, especially since I've got a week off of work to play around. The main event is two days out of town on Some island called, Thetis Island where we've got a cabin we can stay at. This is a nice little island out in the Georgia Straight or Salish Sea (whichever you are currently using) You need to take two ferries to get there from the mainland so it's a biggish journey. Summer time yay!

Exposure to the Elements

2009-03-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

It has been a long and cold winter in these northern climes! It seems as if the weather is just beginning to turn, but in Vancouver you can never be too sure. Here's a taste of what kind of snow we had this year up in the kootenays. This is my father's house in New Denver, BC which is just north of Nelson. My girlfriend and I were up there for New Years which was really nice. It's good to get out of the city and get into the elements from time to time, especially when you're lucky enough to call that place your childhood home. We snowshoed up into the hills for a great afternoon in this small geodesic dome which was made by a family friend in the 1970's deep in the hills of former silver rush territory and now deep in the hills of snowdrift and wildlife territory. My girlfriend has been reading a book entitled, "Plan B" which talks mostly about the impending doom of global warming and the great fall of the global human empire. Basically it says that things are going to get bad, but some things can be done to make the bad not so bad, but if those things aren't done... Ever watch any of the Mad Max movies? Don't be surprised if your grandchildren are taking orders from a midget riding on the back of a giant S&M clad hooded enforcer type who "runs bardertown". We're going to need all the geodesic energy we can get!

Free time! yup... free time... uh huh. total freedom.

2009-02-12T13:26:00.000-08:00

Free time. You, uh, you finally made some time for yourself- in the busy schedule, that is. Yep. Too many people vying for your attention. Too many creative and innovative ideas in that head of your just waiting to burst out onto the page, screen or whatever; possibly into the streets! You needed space and time - and now you have it; all the time in the world, well, what seems like it anyway. To, uh, look at things and, well, think things about them and the importance of them in relation to other things. So many things. whew! Well, maybe too many. This is a picture of the north Oregon coast and I find it somehow indicative of how things are going at the moment; open, many possibilities, but flat. I need a swift kick in the arse but again, as always I guess, I'm going to have to be the one to do it. No small feat as we all know. Wish me luck though and we'll see how things go. Hopefully, I'll be able to put something up a bit more colorful soon blogreaders.

Living in the Heart of the City Scene

2008-03-03T17:28:00.001-08:00

Vancouver's newest "hood"! Yaletown is in many ways a typical "shake and bake" neighborhood to use a term from one of my favorite movies, Aliens. In the movie the term is used to describe an outer-world colony that is introduced to a hostile toxic planet in order to slowly change it's climate. Everything is supplied and ready-to-go right out of the box right down to the local tavern, that is - until the Aliens crawl out of their hiding places and pod everyone. Like the colony in the movie, Yaletown with it's uniform concrete towers, and high-gloss but not long established businesses has a similar feel at times; a wasteland colonized by new hopefuls slotting into the available deal. A tremendous amount of money has been spent on concrete, wallboard and plumbing fixtures, schools have been built, liquor stores have been put in, there's even going to be a Light Rail Station. Living on the 5th floor I don't have a Spectacular City/Mountain View as some in these towers do, but the view out my window is pretty nice. I get a little space in the centre and lots of light.

One of the most surprising aspects of the neighborhood is it's lack of people mulling about between the hours of 9 and 5. I think a large proportion of the populace are not "out on the street" types, but are generally working in other towers downtown or maybe even commuting to the suburbs. At times, the absurdity of a place so densely populated and abandoned has an eerie vibe. Freshly watered flower gardens shine at no-one and cheap fountains bubble-away meaninglessly in empty courtyards.

At first I imagined that most of the people living down here were young, hip students and go-getters who were not inclined to, or just too cool to, raise kids in the obvious confined space of 700 square feet or less. While this is kind of true I now realize there there are a fair amount of youngsters down here too. I guess a small condo is the new "starter home" for a family. I sometimes see kids running around in the common area of some gated complex and being from the countryside I wonder how it must be growing up with thousands of people all stacked up around you and looming towers everywhere. I guess it could be kind of fun in some ways, but it seems so much of the Vancouver downtown nightlife is not geared for kids.

Perhaps the real test for this place will come from these youngsters. What will they think of their home-neighborhood when they reach the age of 14? Will they snort at it's mention the same way hipsters do on Commercial Drive and Main St? Will Yaletown be recognized for being the new Port Coquitlam or South Delta; a place you escape from? It does seem strange to even ponder such deep questions in relation to a place like Yaletown. It's like wondering if the Mall is a great social experiment. In the end, it's still just the Mall, making thoughtful observations doesn't change it's nature. I don't think anyway.

The towering glass forest of Yaletown is comprised almost exclusively of similar and modern high-rise apartment towers mostly built within the last 10 years. - and the building continues. Despite the gloomy prospects of real estate market collapse in the US and predictions of an Olympic fueled hype "bubble" in Vancouver, developments are still going up in Yaletown.

2007-11-06T18:46:00.000-08:00

Crazy. It's been ages since I've written anything here. I've been busy and distracted from the internet and all it's trappings, but I'm back in a somewhat reduced way. I'm actually doing things that are a little less "internet" oriented these days. I hope someone still checks here occasionally. Well, I'm due back for a few posts. Gotta update sooner or later...

I'm still here.

2007-06-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting more frequently. Most of the people who look here have probably moved on to Facebook or something else a little more interactive to keep up with friends by now, but I'll try to persevere. I've nearly forgotten how to post to this thing. Blogs. I suspect that now since practically everyone has a blog it's almost like that planet that they went to on Star Trek where the people were all driven mad because they were all telepathic and in constant communication with everyone telepathically. So, when everyone can know everything about everyone you can be driven mad by the ceaseless chatter of a million people all talking at once about their inner thoughts. Or was that in the Hitch hiker's guide to the Galaxy? I don't remember, but it is kind of true I think. If you have to fill in the blanks of your friends life who's living in Italy for example, your imagination will always be able to fill in the gaps in a more romantic and exciting way than what's probably really happening. I guess it depends on how well they string the thing together. Most blogs are probably like this entry; no photos, no dazzle, just some rambling text about random thoughts. I've got something in the pipeline though, so keep checking back despite the urge to see if you have more "adds" on Facebook.

Setting the Record Straight

2007-02-25T10:48:00.000-08:00

Well, it's getting to be springtime in Vancouver slowly - ever so slowly. They're gutting the atrocity across the street to make it purdy for the summer I guess. It's amazing how ugly a building can be. My mother wanted me to post this picture because in another one of my links to Flickr she says that I depicted her house as being too ramshackle and trashy looking. I guess she's more worried about how the house looks than I thought. Or at least I did at the time cause it seems to me that if she cared that much about it, then it wouldn't have looked that way when I took the picture. Then she sent me this picture

I grew up in this house and everyone I know likes this house, but to me it's a bit ramshakly, there's no getting around it no matter how you take the picture- (esp. when you take one using a flash at night with the burnt coffee pot there and the mackinaw wood-gathering jacket hanging in the background.) there's going to be an element of "shack" in there somewhere and I wouldn't have it any other way.

2007-02-25T09:16:00.000-08:00

hi its me looking photoshopped in maui.

Cast Iron meets heat, falls in love with chicken stones...

2007-02-19T00:50:00.000-08:00

My friend gave me a vast cast iron frying pan- and the story goes like this: The pan was put on the stove where it was covered in oil and heated.

While this was happening I rustled up two eggs, half an expired onion, some smoked wild coho, and this tin (also a gift) of highly regarded and coveted rare cheddar cheese imported from the Washington State University cheese labs- no shit.

The label assured me that I can trust Jessica at the Washington State University to make my cheese gifts for me. I briefly imagine Jessica. Who would go to university to make cheese? I don't know why, but I imagine a young asian woman with a shower cap on, sealing my cheese tin as if it contained a rare cancer drug.

The label is as obscure as the concept. Do they care if anyone buys the cheese? Is it a social experiment? Anyway it's delicious and strong and buttery so let em give phd's in cheesology just so I can make omlettes, because by now, let's face it, thats is where this post is going-

A little beating of the eggs and chopping-up of the rest of the stuff... In case you didn't notice, the eggs are organic, omega3, super eggs. 6 bucks a doz unless you rescue two from the garbage like I did.

Now... the whole creation just settles into that sweet stadium of a frying pan and bathes in it's even heat. Cause when were talking cast iron, were talking even and were talking heat. Note the low setting on the gas. Thats what i mean by even, thats what I mean by heat.

It had to go near the window for the tasty lighting on my desk/kitchen table. I still don't have chairs so I had to eat it standing up. It was that good. You could eat it standing up.

Skunks!

2007-02-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

At about 1am in the morning the other night, our house got stink bombed by skunks who were living in the crawlspace underneath. The odor took about 30 seconds to completely engulf the house and drive us from it retching and gagging. The smell is so terrible you can't imagine. It's like imagine that someone farts right into or inside your nose and forces you to smell it and then just keeps eternally farting in your face so that each time you breathe to get air you're just taking in more stench and you feel like you're going to drown in stink. That's kind of what this was like. Not only that, but unlike general stink which just roils around and then goes away as the particles are carried away by the air, skunk musk oils are carried everywhere by the air and then settle and adhere to surfaces so that the stench keeps on giving day after day, reminding you that you live inside a skunks rear end and that all your stuff is tainted with it's musk. We ended up going to the Nam (the only restaurant open) and eating miso fries and drinking tea in the corner because we stunk like skunks. The worst part is that was over a week ago and our house still stinks and the skunk is still down there laughing at us. I was coming home from work the other night and I saw the skunk, skunking around the outside of the house. When it saw me it darted back underneath probably to birth spawn with musk sacs of their own to spray me with. Something has to be done!

Being Healthy is work!

2007-02-08T15:48:00.000-08:00

OK, I've been bagging groceries like a madman lately. And maybe it's driving me mad. It's the post-Christmas eating depression season. At my work we have a lot of healthy food and healthy people who come through wanting to stay that way. I realize that people obsess over food and health more and more as they get older - myself included. It goes without saying I guess. Occasionally though, a health nut will pass through my register with a kid in tow going off on some tear about, "sugar" and "how candy will kill you" etc... I can understand the will not to have your kid bloat up and contract diabetes before 20 but, really, there's probably more sugar in Phad Thai than a coupla pieces of licorice. I mean, just cause you can't stomach the thought of eating candy, it's no crime to let a kid walk on the wild side from time to time is it? Don't worry - the child's probably going to outlive you even if they are bit unhealthy. That's my opinion at least, but according to the news reports children are all too fat now. Too much nutrition. Too many calories. Too much xbox. Not enough soccer, flax, and beet greens. Not enough piano practice, goats milk, and Colgrabi/quinoa stews! Too much Lexus, Kokanee, and Henessee. Too many text messages, cheese doodles, and you tube. Not enough Harrowsmith, engevita yeast and "pro-ganic" baby food! Well... I may have spawn of my own one day and find myself eating crow, but if I do have children one day, this blog or any of the diatribe therein will probably have been deleted or long since abandoned. Being healthy is so complicated.

I'm back

2007-02-02T17:17:00.001-08:00

I've just beamed down.JPG
Originally uploaded by 2-way.

Well. I was in Maui, Hawaii for my grandma's 99th birthday recently. It was fun. She seems to be doing fairly well all things considered. My auntie threw a big party for her and she seemed pretty happy for most of the night. Basically, I've just put some pictures here to prove that I actually was there. The ocean was big blue and beautiful as always and the temperature was around 27 degreess the whole time so it was a nice respite from the cold climes of Vancouver. Me and my mother went walking through this park on the less inhabited part of the island where there were some relatively "fresh" lava rock fields. Pretty nice stuff if you can swing it. Thank god for jet travel

Means to an Ends

2007-01-03T17:26:00.000-08:00

Cant quite get my head out of the clouds since New Years. The laundry piles up and the short-dated chicken in my fridge is stinking to high hell. The short walk to the coffee franchise yields a low cloudline view of the North Shore mountains still rimmed with snow. The whole city is painted in a hue of blue-greys. Something about all this always makes me want to wander back into bed or back in front of the computer which are both about equally productive these days. Unless bodily excretion counts as production - certainly not unless you're one of those creepy "collectors" in CSI hollywood killer plots. I'm pretty far from there yet thank god. "Low energy", is what someone in Vancouver would say. Maybe in Tokyo they say, "Lazy". In NYC I imagine they say, "irresponsible", but what do I know about what they say? Strings of January birthdays coming up including mine and plenty else to get excited about, but I still can't seem to boost myself in the mornings. On a more upbeat note, I'm going to Hawaii for a few days in January, so there's no reason to feel sorry for me or anything. Post when I get back.

HNY

2006-12-30T21:50:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years to those few who read here. Let's hope aliens come down this year and fix everything. Maybe they can use their ET healing powers to resurrect the late, great James Brown. On the good side, I like my new apartment and am myself looking forward to good times after the 1st. If it sounds like I've got a lot to gripe about, believe me I don't. I'm going to Maui on Jan. 10th so feel free to call me up and tell me how full of it I am. Actually, don't do that. My Grandmother is turning 99 this January and while she's on the edge of becoming a centenarian, I feel I should be paying her a visit. She is after all, my single surviving grandparent. I've been bagging groceries like crazy over the Christmas holidays and I can't complain too much. At least I was out of the rain and employed. From a grocery baggers perspective, people in town seem kind of glum this Holiday Season. Low on cash, low on initiative, cynical about the future etc... Maybe I'm projecting but I've heard retail sales in the downtown shops were un-inspiring (if retail sales can be such a thing) so maybe people're hunkering down for some serious not having too much dough left over- times. Skip the ipods and motorcycles, a box of organic mandarins and all the Christmas cheer money can't buy should do. I had a great Christmas. My mother came to hang out for a week and it was made merrier by the presence of good company and friends. Chocolates were shared, mandarins were eaten, cheese plates passed, and no Christmas would've been complete without a Baked Sockeye Salmon. mmmm.... Well here's to being over the hump of short days and I wish everyone well in the New Year.

Jinga-ling ling jing a ling ling...

2006-12-06T18:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas is coming and people seem to be getting into it- deep. Despite the weak US retail indicators on Wall Street or whatever, it seems people can't get enough of shopping on Main St and Robson. Bad job? Bad credit? Bad indicators? "Nuthin's gonna stop me from gettin my daughter a Ipod this christmas!" Seems to be the motto. I've been listening to a lot of modern Christmas Carols at work and in malls and everywhere even when the music's stopped it continues to circulate in my subconscious long after. Thank you Jesus! Thanks Father Christmas! With a big shout out to Maria Cary, David Bowie and George Michael who seem to be everywhere on the xmas Muzak scene which is an indicator to me that the whole Christmas spirit thing is kinda like Broadway Musicals - about 10 years behind on the cultural chic-o-metre. However, speaking of chic, being a fan of early Hip Hop I do like Kurtis Blow's seminal carol (there's two words not oft co-located), and ingeniously named, "Christmas Rappin" which seems to very closely echo one of my favorite disco tunes of all time: Chic's Good Times. Now that's a Christmas tune if I ever heard one. James Brown also produced a very very good Christmas album entitled "James Brown's Funky Christmas". ...and it is. - so... options are out there. Here's my Christmas advice, load up Good Times, crank the VOL, crack the Cuban rum, and bust a move on that 5 dollar-a-square-foot-per-month linoleum you've been squandering by cooking stir-frys alone waiting for "Lost" to come on. Do it, do it for St. Nick! Oh, and if you want some friends to come over, may as well invite them too; more's the merrier.

Winter Wonderland

2006-11-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

Or did I mean to say, "boogie wonderland"? Many are staying indoors and with good reason. There is at least a half foot of frozen snow on the ground. For the throngs of Vancouvergoers who can't stand the thought of brewing their own coffee or for those like me who don't own a Mr Coffee and want to shell for the stuff down the street it's hazerdous. True the many who had the extra cash to buy the SUV of their teenage dreams a few years back before the gas prices made the rest of us douches wag our fingers and say "in your face - landrapers!", we are now recieving a counter wag in the face, a "coup-fouret" as the French like to say. This morning I was navigating the ice patches down the hill to a local coffee chain with a girl no less (my neighbor) and in my weathered, New Balance and low-cut wanna-be jeans when my feet went out from under me and I wiped out pretty spectacularly with my feet scrambling for control and then whammed straight down on my ass. Seeing people wipe out is usually pretty funny, especially when they're so unprepared for wiping out, but it still hurts. Especially when you imagine others watching you wipe out. Vancouver is definitely not well prepared for snow, but anyone who lives here knows, that - and it's a good thing. I'm not sure I could handle -30 degree winters every year, but that's me. Something about the tropics just calls to me. Maybe it's the warm weather, laid back lifestyle, or the abundance of fresh fruit. Or maybe it's just the warm weather. Apparently I'm not alone. And for all those of you who say, "Oh, I looove the snow and cold in the winter. I wouldn't have it any other way!" and then jet off to Acupulco for 2 weeks in January just when the gettins good; you can't handle it either. Admit it, snows fun for 1 month tops and then it starts to become a pain in the !##$##@ read, "my fucking" ass.

Rain

2006-11-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

I'm not prepared for the weather of Canada. It's been terrible. It's rained pretty much every day in November and there's no sign of it stopping. It's dark, it's dank and every time I get on the bus some drippy person comes on with a stinking bag of McDonalds. Why is that?

New Blogger

2006-11-22T13:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I've got the new Blogger account. so I guess I'll soon see if it's anything different. So far it looks pretty much the same. I was actually trying to do some manual editing to my site earlier in the day, but it proved a lot more difficult than I thought. Now I know why people get paid good money for that sort of thing. Still when you look out there on the internet at all the well designed pages and blogs people have, it's pretty surprising how many look slick. I thought I could get all photo-centric with the layout and stuff, but once I started moving stuff around. It got pretty difficult to put things in the right places. I guess I just take computers for granted sometimes. Hmm... beta indeed. Looks like I'll need a few more hours to work out the bugs.

Sorry no pictures

2006-11-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

My camera is loaned to someone else so there won't be pictures here for a little while. I was performing on a children's park ride as a swamp creature through out October and that just ended so it's nice to take a breather as it's quite exhausting being gregarious and happy for 4 hours in a row. I'm also a cashier at a grocery store so between the two jobs there was a lot of insincere happiness that I had to dole out. Tiring stuff but now that it's over I can relax and only be insincerely happy with the usual 30% of the people I deal with. Remembrance Day is today and people seem to be doing a fair amount of remembering or "never forgetting" or however you want to look at it. Lot's of depressing war and slaughter on the news webs to make it easier too... If the rain would relent here that'd probably put me in a better mood in general. There is no end...

Five Buck Bus Stop Umbrella

2006-11-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

Daily drizzle punctuated by slicing winds and hard rain. Ahh... yes, Vancouver and the familiar "ssssss" of cars on wet streets. It's 10 o-clock in the morning but the sky looks like it should be 7 in the evening. Well, my stint at the Vancouver Ghost Train has ended with little fanfare, but a slightly wetter and heavier wallet this month. I think I've probably spent the difference on draft beer and wines around the hood already. Hmmm, what else is new? Not much. I've been kinda sick lately; colds, sniffles, indigestion. It's all been adding to my malaise-o-metre. It must be part of that problem they talk about in Finland and Sweden where despite the fact that you have a great job and clean running water, it's so grey and dark during the day- you just wanna commit suicide. I'd forgotten how much it rains here in November. Well- I'm off to work. Hopefully I'll have more photos and stuff to post soon.

UBC Leaders of Tomorrow!!!

2006-10-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

Here's one picture I have of Vancouver, sort of... In case some of my readers in Mexico want to know if Ale is truly going to UBC or not. Here's actual proof that she's been attending. She's standing in front of the UBC rose garden and that's the ocean out behind. UBC is in quite a nice spot. Actually, we see little of each other because she's quite busy reading and writing all the time, but she seems to be doing well!

Back in Vancouver

2006-09-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Vancouver and I still need batteries for my camera so I don't have new pictures, but, well, they will be there soon. I'm writing this in a coffee shop that has free internet! Woah. It's great, but it's made everyone into internet addicts here. People seem to expect you to get back to them the same day if you receive an email. The weather has been really cooperative though- so that's nice. So have a lot of other things... I've got a pretty decent day job and a really nice, although cold apartment. I guess the excitement factor will be toned down a bit now that I'm in Vancouver and not somewhere where many who read this blog aren't. Grey today. I went out last night and performed in a plastic costume made to make me look like the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Pretty good costume. I was swarmed by children though and it's exhausting work especially in the cold, damp climes of Stanley Park at night. I'll explain myself. I'm part of a theatrical installation that is put inside the parks nature train ride every halloween to amuse families. Basically, I'm a professional Haunted House performer, but I hang out outside the ride where all the kids run around eating sugar and pulling on the fins of my plastic costume. Some parents think it's funny to see me swarmed by children pulling at me (I am paid after all) and laugh as I hold back the desire to become physically violent. Don't worry though. I'm really good at holding back.

Solo to San Miguel

2006-08-29T00:17:00.000-07:00

San Miguel is nestled in the mountains near Quéretaro Mexico in the state of Guanajuato and one of the most popular non-beach tourist destinations in Mexico. It has become a kind of mecca (in a world of meccas) for artisans, artists and people who love them and want to buy their wares, especially people from the US.

I took the bus there alone and the journey was nice. In Querétaro I decided to get a second class ticket to San Miguel as I had sprung more for the 1st. class ticket to Querétaro.

Second class busses to San Miguel weren't quite as clunky and funky as the ones in Oaxaca and other states, but it still stopped everywhere and packed in people from the countryside until it was standing room only. There was a guitar player for awhile who saranaded us with the classics.

When on the bus in central Mexico you spend a lot of time climbing and descending mountains while looking at small, impossibly insignificant villages, dry scrublands, lush tropical forests, pine forests, and busy cities. All this could be in fairly close quarters. If you're riding second class a lot of people pile in over time, usually carrying stuff or just going to work, or both.

I believe that many people from "el otro lados" to the north and in Europe who, having realized the great exchange rate and cheaper prices of retirement in Mexico have migrated down to Mexico for retirement or whatever and San Miguel is popular in this vein. There are some stellar houses here. It's a very beautiful, manicured town in the central part and English is widely spoken. There is a peaceful central square with bubbling fountains and some great stores for buying art crafts. Apparently San Miguel was once popular with painters from Europe and elsewhere for it's extraordinary light.

It was grey and pissing rain on the day of my arrival, but the next day when the clouds parted and I could see what people were talking about.

There is an clear and crisp quality to the sunlight. Maybe it's the clarity of the air and the fact that the town is up in the mountains that makes it so. Mexico City sometimes has light like this when the air is clean. At any rate I can see why the place has been popular for so long. It's quaint, temperate, fresh, bright, and peaceful without being dead either. I basically wandered around ducking under awnings to get out of the periodic deluges, bought some coffees, looked at stuff. If you're from Canada or the States then you won't want for anything here. There are veggie restaurants, coffee bars, Jazz joints, clubs, lotsa shops, and even trendy food like pressed panini sandwiches. If you don't swing this way, you can always look for a place over on the other, less popular, side of town where most of the locals probably live. It looked nice there too.

Some people here say that San Miguel is too manicured and I can kind of understand what they say. Many cities have this now. It's like when Chinatowns decide they're real, "Chinatowns" and begin the erection of all kinds of plaques, dragon sculptures, statues, etc... Theme cities and theme neighborhoods. If you ever find yourself in Vancouver or if you're currently there, like me you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about. See the "totally drive certified" embossments in the pavement on Commercial Drive in order to induce wretching. Well San Miguel is still pretty nice. And I recommend a visit and stay in one of the many pleasant hotels around there. You may never leave or at least return with your matured yet insufficient RRSP cheque in the future. If you are lucky enough to have one that is...

Metro Pantitlan

2006-08-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

A coupla times a week I teach an early class on the eastern side of the city at the Benito Juarez Airport. I usually take the metro out there and I have to be on the train at 6 to get there at 7. I descend into Metro San Antonio at around a quarter to six if I'm making good time on the western side and it's usually a pretty tame affair. At six the Metro is still tolerable in that neighborhood. It's a long trip and I need to transfer 2 times.

By twenty to seven the train shoots out of the ground on the eastern side of Mexico City and on a good day the sun will just be starting to come up, breaking dramatically over the sprawl of Delegation Pantitlan. Sitting right in the middle surrounded by a six lane highway, baffling traffic glorietas, thru-ramps, a water pump station, steaming taco stalls, Tamale hawkers, and a bus plaza for incoming suburban busses, is Metro Pantitlan.

Pantitlan is the terminus of 4 metro lines, and many many suburban Collective busses. The busses are all private, loud, large, and in all manner of shape. Some are relatively new while others belch diesel clouds. The first indication you are getting near the pantitlan area is the acrid, smell of sulphur. In the surrounding crowded neighborhood light industry and people are packed in tight little streets. By the time I reach it, Pantitlan is in full swing with no signs of stopping.

It seems that the entire city of Mexico is trying to squeeze through it's turnstiles. Everything is grey slab concrete. Papers swirl around in the bus plaza below the platforms as busses, hundreds of busses with names like "Pepe, 'Lucia", and "El Perdido" make thier way through the unorganized lanes. Out on the streets a endless river of trucks, busses and cars are slowly trawling by honking incessantly. Some honk in rhythm others use special "General Lee" styles of musical horns. In places of mass transit there is always an Ad-hoc establishment of food stalls and other market items like cellphones for sale called "Tiangis". Down in the bus plaza a woman is making tortillas, tacos, and quesadillas, while her husband sells fresh squeezed OJ. Dogs abound. There are dogs in the plaza, doggies on the platforms, dogs in the street and a special black doggie that I've named "el pancito" who always wanders in the same place on an overpass stairway I go through.

When I first set my eyes on Pantitlan I realized that here is the Real Mexico City. While the fountains and plazas of Coyoacan and La Condessa are much more attractive and pleasant to actually be in, Pantitlan Station is where all the other millions of Mexicans who're priced out of the downtown real estate index come into the city at 7 in the morning to work. Horse carts sometimes clop along with the traffic and men with cardboard boxes full of plastic cell phone holsters await the next train to the Zocalo. Mexico City has many such "nodes" where people transfer from the State of Mexico to urban transit in the city. Of course there isnt any visible line where the city ends and the outskirts begin. It all seems to be one solid flat slab of humanity. A slab that I am soon to leave after nearly 2 years.

But it will always be here as has been the truth for thousands of years. And I look forward to coming back soon.

General Street Stuff

2006-07-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

Juarez St downtown is a great place to get ripped off and/or score a cheap electronic thing. It is the market of ripped software, video games, and all kinds of stuff made in China that Americans didn't buy enough of. If you ever wonder what happens to stuff that Wal Mart can't get rid of - this is where it goes. To the streets! I like it down here. I usually never buy anything, but it's interesting to wander around for a little while on Juarez or in the surrounding area. It's not as groomed as some of the other neighborhoods, but it's downtown and while there's a movement on to "rejuvenate" the downtown core, it's not progressing at a "canary wharf" (London) pace. It seems that's what all the big cities are doing now- kicking out the rent control scum and glitzing up the downtown cores. One could also call it "sterilizing" but one man's hovel is another man's loft I guess. I do like espresso coffee though so I'm guilty of complacency. I'll never forget last Christmas when I came down here to buy gifts and saw a woman selling tequila shooters and raw oysters on the half shell from a rusted shopping cart over a windy, dusty metro grate. So as you can read, it's not gonna be Times Square tomorrow.

tiangis in Juarez ave.

"networking appliance wholesale reseller requires FT personnel"

Torre Latino in the Bkgrnd. Frustrated looking dude in the fore.

Where would the world be without tarps? The tarp has saved us all. Someone should get a Nobel Prize for that- I'm serious.

Look at this picture: Can you see something wrong? I took it in the middle of the Zocalo.

Let's move in a little closer...

Uh huh. This room cleaner emerged nonchalantly and started cleaning the OUTSIDE of the window in her uniform and runners with no ropes or nothing!

And you thought your job sucked. Scary stuff. I wanted to run over and scream, "it's not worth it!" but maybe it was. Now I know that people are full of it when they say, "Mexicans take jobs Americans won't do!" I think it reads more like, "...jobs I'm too afraid to do or unskilled to do without dying!" This experience confirmed for me a suspicion I've always had about the claptrap surrounding the construction of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State building in NYC among other big things... I used to believe that romantic story the tour guides tell about how Mohawk first nations people were shipped in to do the dangerous work cause they "Had no fear of heights..." Sure sure... ok. Is it the same "fearlessness of dynamite in caves" that Chinese immigrants had while they were making the railroads? I'd dig deeper into this ironic joke, but the whole idea is so obviously racist, sexist etc. that I have trouble writing it. But I think you get what I mean. Why do I have to always be so bleak? It's not entirely my fault. She stepped onto the ledge. The world presented itself to me and I filled in the blanks. How can you look on the bright side of that? There is no bright side of that.

New Pres blah blah wealth divide blah blah

2006-07-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like barring some kind of revelation about vote tampering Philipe Calderon will keep PAN in the president's chair for another 6 years. Vote tampering is no stranger to Mexico. There is considerable proof that elections have been tampered with in the past; especially during the 75 year tenure of the PRI party. We gave directions to an observer on election day so it's good to know that there are some people looking out for the uh, "fairness" of it all. At any rate it's going to make the whole issue ugly now that the closest opponent Manuel Obrador is fuming mad about the results and demanding a re-count. A friend of mine works in the Elections Department and I didn't see any new sports cars parked outside his building so that's a good sign, but the reality of having such a close vote is that no matter what happens, people are going to feel cheated.

What i think it means is that Mexico will continue along the same way it has for the last little while barring any economic meltdown in the US. Foreign investment will continue to come in and Mexico will continue to top the charts with Brazil as one of Latin America's top "growing economies". I think little can be done in the long term about crime as Calderon seems to favor a gloves off approach with more police and "special units" which are notoriously corruptible and probably will be underfunded. The PAN party did not win many seats in the senate which will make for a lot of governmental gum-flapping I'm sure. What really happened was that the middle class (which many people seem to think is growing and often refer to it as "Mexico's Growing Middle Class" but I've heard from others that it's actually shrinking) and the rich voted for Calderon and many poor people especially in the south and in Mexico City voted for Obrador. The elections mirror the wealth divide, have brought the anger and disillusionment of Mexico's poor into relief and even possibly polarized many to stand behind the flags of the PRD. Perhaps they will be able to cash in on it in 2012. Until then it seems to be Business As Usual with a capital B - and I'm not talking about the platinum Men At Work album. ...hmmm, and in case you wanted more information that you could've gotten just by watching the news, uh, Italy won the World Cup-bye.

Mexico will know soon.

2006-07-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

Mexico had an election yesterday and the tension has been building as they continue to count the votes in the close race between Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador and Philipe Calderon. People are pretty nervous on both sides of the coin as each candidate has fairly different ideas on how to solve Mexico's problems and which direction to steer the country in for the next 6 years. Obrador is seen as a left-leaning guy, an ex-activist and, being reared in a poor neighborhood in Tabasco, in touch with Mexico's large poor population. He pledges he will take "big money" to task while spending lots of cash on government projects. Philipe Calderon seems to echo the feelings of much of Mexico's Business community and rich and middle classes. He's pledged to "crack down" on crime and violence all the time increasing jobs and economy through more NAFTA, free enterprise and incentives to Business. I think both will have a hard time living up to these promises, but Calderon has the advantage of running under the banner of the current Government, PAN. Many who work outside of big multinational companies are not happy with the results from the last 6 years of the Fox Government, but even those who wouldn't side with him seem happier seeing a government tried and tested in office than a left-wing hothead who may muddle up the already hot-potato issue of US-Mexico relations. Obrador is considered by many to be a man of the people. He's often shown shaking hands with farmers in jeans and casual attire and has promised an end to violence mainly through fighting against poverty. He's apparently promised hefty wage and Tax reform both of which will have a hard time implementing, but are sorely needed. His party is very popular in Mexico City. Mainly people are worried that his kind of policies will scare away foreign investment, which it just may do to some degree. Mainly the ideologies at play here seem to me to be the people who feel business as usual is good business against those who are tired of seeing vast quantities of money in an apparently well-performing economy passing, uncontested to those who need it the least ie: the rich.

I've read that as a foreigner in Mexico it's actually illegal for me to become too involved in Mexican politics. I'm not sure about the trueness of this as it seems there's no end to the foreign interests vying for a slice of the Mexican pie and pundits who scramble down on expense accounts to cover, study, analyze, and even coerce it. Lets just say my meager 2 cent's is about all it's worth. I'm practically paraphrasing and anyone who wants the real goods can go to their website of choice and read paid-for articles about the same and more... As for me? I hope Obrador wins. I hope foreign interests won't pack up and take all their money with them and I hope Mexico will find itself a better off place because of it. If Calderon wins? Well I for one don't expect things will change too much. He seems to feel his government is doing a great job right now. He'd do well though to keep his eye on that huge crowd in the Zocalo and pay attention to how big and angry it grows.

Eating High and Low

2006-06-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

MMmm. I was in Cuernavaca awhile ago and I went to a restaurant that serves food from the Yucatan Peninsula. In case you don't know where that is, it's the jungly southern protrusion into the Caribbean where the hurricanes hit this year and where Cancun is located. I've never been there but by all appearances the people there eat well at least.

These are little chalupitas done in the style of the yucatan with a red salsa and pork.

This is chiken with a kind of sauce maybe a little like a mole which my friend ate. It was spicy and delicious.

Now you'd be looking at three Yucutan style tamales wrapped in banana leaf and just sitting there waiting to be eaten my me as the case was. If you like Tamales, you'll like these kind. Yucutan food is enjoyed by many Mexicans as it is usually hot and has unique flavors not found elsewhere. Yup eating is fun still. I just hope I'm not eating too much.

This was the lime soup served with tortilla strips that is always good. Down here limes are eaten with just about everything if you want. Lemons however are rarer. Also Limes in Spanish are called "limon" whereas lemons are "Lima". Interesting huh? Well, I've got more material coming up for the blog so don't worry if this post wasn't interesting enough for you. Also don't get the impression that just because I'm posting all this exotic food means I'm eating like this all the time. I mean, this is exciting stuff for me as always. Most of the time it's something cheaper and faster like a tamale torta or a taco and yes, yes, sadly, instant noodles failing that. Sometimes I wonder, while eating instant noodles, how many other people in the world are also eating instant noodles at the same moment. If you think about it the popularity of Instant Noodles its phenomenal. They are hugely popular in Mexico. I've seen Ad's for the local variety of styro noodle cups during prime time football games. Actually, I have to admit. Instant noodles are a little better here. They are usually hotter and you can get flavors with shrimp things inside and chilies too and none of those weird "curry" flavors. I wonder if the "I'm gonna eat at Mc'Donald's for a month and video it" guy had eaten Ichibans for a month and recorded his health. He'd have probably gone through time or something; just dissolved into another dimension. Let's face it though here it's generally a question of cost. I mean, when I see that the local corner store has a whole shelf devoted to styro noodles It's not because people relish them. I see the local masons (construction workers) go in there and buy those for lunch with an imitation coke and a kraft slice ham on white. Mexico City is being built on Ichibans.

run pig run

2006-05-06T16:53:00.000-07:00

run pig run
Originally uploaded by 2-way.

Well, I´m not even sure if i´ve shown this photo before, but in light of not contributing to my blog for sometime, I guess this is the photo of the day. I haven´t been taking many pictures lately. Pigs do have a lot of reason to run here as Mexicans have found many delicious ways to savor their flavor. ¨The Other White Meat¨ is probably the most popular here with beef at a close second. Many people seem to crave beef, or pork, but settle for chicken which is cheaper and No3 on the guts´most wanted list. It´s been really hot and stormy here lately. Hard rains often roar down in the early evening along with some pretty impressive thunder and lightening shows. At this point it´s a nice change from the hot and dry weather of early spring.

Tyin' the knot

2006-04-26T09:42:00.001-07:00

My mother likes Mexico a lot so it's not difficult to get her to come down for visits. She principally was visiting to come for the wedding of my cuñada but since she arrived a few days early, we went to Taxco for a quick two days. I've mentioned Taxco in previous posts, but now I have a picture to post.

Well, the family wedding was a few weeks ago and everything was nice and happy and sweet and delicious. It was held at a mansion hotel in Cuernavaca, a small town near Mexico City. There were maybe 150 guests or so and many stayed on to party into the late evening with dancing, karaoke and DJ hits. The then Radiant Bride has returned from her honeymoon in Southeast Asia and seems happy that things have returned to normal and of course is excited to be married yay!

We went to a rather good art show by a Dutch artist who lives in the Centro Historico of DF the other day. His name is Francis Alys and his show is huge, taking up nearly the whole gallery and including drawings, writings, videos, photographs, multimedia, sculpture, and found stuff that all somehow relate to the neighborhood around his studio. There are always lots of good modern art shows to see in Mexico City as well as the more touristy art galleries and museums and much of it is interesting and good. This show seems to be inevitably as much about the life of a foreign artist living in Mexico City as it is about more banal contemporary art ideas - bodies in space, time, intersection, etc... I haven't been to scores of shows, but when making visual art in Mexico City it seems impossible to erase the watermark that the city's uniqueness leaves. Mexico doesn't have the governmental arts funding of fancy places like Canada or France, but it is a net exporter of artists nonetheless and in Mexico City and some other places like Oaxaca, there seem to be strong arts initiatives both publicly and privately funded.

I'm 95% water, 5% tacos

2006-03-20T12:24:00.000-08:00

Maybe you don't know it but the World Water Forum or something like that is coming to DF this week. Mexico City is dry and often hot and the water has almost disappeared. One thing I learned recently is that Mexico City isn't just sinking because it was built over a lake. It's sinking because we're literally drinking the lake. Water is already being pumped from nearby states in enormous amounts and at enormous cost and still apparently over a million people here have to have it trucked into their houses by private companies and their taps start hissing before noon. And just because I said they "have to have it trucked in", doesn't mean they do. Seriously, how many dishes would you wash and how many showers would you take a day if you had to pay by the cup? I remember David Suzuki's smiling face on CBC pleasantly talking about how millions of people are probably going to die from water crisis and it kind of being this far away abstract idea. I mean, there's so much water around in Canada, there's no way that's ever going to effect me or anyone I know, just some poor people in the Sudan or wherever and their probably used to it, but I can now unfortunately relate a little better. Here I am in this modern city with malls and cineplexes and if I'm thirsty there's scarce public fountains. One week we ran out of water and it sucked. I boiled water just so I could get a glass in the morning. A secretary at one of the companies I teach at told me she wakes up at 7am on weekends and I asked why? "That's the only time they turn on the water in my neighborhood." she said. There are over 20 million thirsty people living here. World Water Forum? How about a World Water Tank? I guess the moral to this story is, uh, enjoy the hose games while you can, or store it away for a rainy day, cause as David Suzuki so calmly warned, we'll all be paying 25 cents a litre for recycled urine before we're 80. Some of us already are. I don't think he actually said that, but he was probably thinking it.

There is a man who brings the water to my house. He charges about 2.50 for a big jug and he carries 2 at a time up 5 flights of stairs, and If you've ever loaded one of those water coolers, I don't need to tell you this is what we call "hard work". He rides a commonly seen type of delivery bicycle in Mexico which has a welded basket on the front for holding things- bread, tacos, tamales, water, newspapers, whatever... In his case it's maybe 6 or 7 big plastic jugs of filtered water. This is his business. He claims it's "Electropura!" which he shouts at the top of his lungs in the street every morning, but he and I and everyone knows it's a "Just as good as Electropura knock-off water." Clean water is big biz in Mexico. You can find small bottles, medium, and the large 25 gallon water cooler sizes for sale in any store. Coca Cola has it's fingers in the pie as well as most of the other major bottlers and 100 pesos says that's the kind of thing they were talking about in the Forum as opposed to how we're going to get through the next 100 years with everyone having a clean running tap. "FORUM" - even the name has a suspicious, purring Mercedes limo convoys outside the W hotel, ring to it.

And in case you thought this guy was working too hard there is another guy who comes around every other day and shleps those four foot steel bottles of propane to the roofs of every building in the hood. I can barely lift one of these things, and while I'm no strong man by any standards, jolts of pain shoot up my back in sympathy seeing these guys. There are a lot of hard livings to be had in DF.

In case anyone's actually interested in what happened over the few days of the Forum, there were some big protests. G Bush and some other big names from around the globe were in town. They shut down the entire downtown core; busses of cops, riot gear, helicopters, blast walls, the whole shebang. Anti globalization groups clashed with police and many of the cities populace came out to walk and make their voices heard about being thirsty and tired of it. Yeah, it was actually fairly depressing. BBC has a link HERE I still haven't heard anything about what was accomplished. My mouth gets dry just thinking about it.

Bride, ponytail, turbo scratcher

2006-03-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

Well, my friends from Canada are gone now, so things have once again returned to the daily dodge and metro swing. It's going good. Ale's sister is getting married in Apr. and the family's winding up for the pitch. There are lots of tasks and each one of us must carry some responsibility and as the date moves closer everyone seems to be getting more nervous. IT's kind of interesting, I don't think I've ever been this close to the whole wedding planning thing. It's going to be a nice, smallish wedding though so it's not like we have to be too over-stressed. But by smallish I don't mean a justice of the peace, 1 bowl of styro cup punch, and a potluck spread of garbanzo stew and potato salad. Don't get me wrong. I was raised on these kinds of weddings and would welcome one, but Mexican weddings are usually a pretty big deal. I guess you can add Mexicans to the long line of cultures that have the stereotyped distinction of having big weddings. Someone should make a My Big Fat Mexican Wedding themed movie to further cash in on the seemingly neverending interest in wedding movies. In Mexico even in smaller and often poorer communities people still find the wherewithal to throw a big bash, often bigger than in the more conservative and wealthy circles I'm told. The party apparently sometimes rages for a few days. With that much material you could make one of those 4 hour films.

Ale and her soon to be wed sister have been stressing for the last few days on the right type of hair bun/do for her to sport on her big day. I never realized the intricacies involved, but to those who know me well, that won't come as a surprise.

I had a pony tail for, like, 8 years or something and it never occurred to me that other things could be done with that hair or that it even might make finding jobs harder etc. Actually, now that I think about it I think that while I wore the ponytail I basically just forgot the hair existed. It was as if I stuffed it in a drawer or something- gone. I mean, you can't see it in a mirror straight on and as a guy I guess I wasn't in the strong habit of looking at other angles in mirrors. It wasn't until some girls from Art School told me that my pony tail looked like shit that I decided to put the issue under review. Then the more people I talked to, the more people told me that, yes, it did indeed look, if not out of style, like shit. Well, now my hair is going grey and the whole being over-concerned with my hair issue is on the verge of expiry. Or actually, probably it's just the beginning of a new more-concerned era. I mean, I shouldn't feel too bad about it I guess. At least I had a pony tail even if I did wear out it's fashion statement by a decade or so. Yeah, it was uncool of me. Uncool regrets. Grecian Formula here i come!

In other big news, we bought the cat a turbo scratcher. You may remember a fairly insignificant previous post wherein I mentioned and posted a picture of our overweight live-in cat. Well in an attempt to get his blood going and help him lose a few pounds we're instituting a two pronged plan. A turbo scratcher co-initiated with a "Fat Cat" food type which is supposed to help him realize a new thinner self. The Turbo Scratcher was an immediate big hit. I don't like to endorse as-seen-on-TV products, but the combination of catnip impregnated cardboard and whirly ball had him scratching away practically before I could remove the cello wrap. The food was also a big hit, but as it's more expensive I can only surmise that it has more to do with the exposure to higher grade bone meal, snouts and cartilage than he was used to. The "diet" formula seems to have more to do with the size of the scooper than anything else and this is the one part of the equation that the cat is not too keen on. He's basically starving all the time. Whereas before he was content heaving on the couch all day, he is now a green-eyed, screeching fur purse. Not only is he using his scratcher, but he scratches everything in the house out of frustration. He chases us around and scratches our legs and howls for food constantly. Sometimes he even howls for it while he's eating it! It is no longer a give and take relationship, but a one way repetitive exercise in gullet stuffing. What can we do though? His stomach was grey from dragging on the ground and he was the subject of drawing room jokes!

Hotter, visitors, and the bus

2006-02-22T14:06:00.000-08:00

Well, back in DF I've been getting a little more busy with the teaching stuff and whatnot as well. It's finally getting warmer here so I can shed my sweaters and wear T-shirts during the day. Twice a week I have a pretty busy schedule and end up having to metro and pesero my way around the city quite a bit.

Basically, peseros are Mexico City's bus system and they do a surprisingly good job in my eyes of supplying the other 80 percent of Chilangos who don't own vehicles a way to get around. Let's get one thing straight, it's not Coast Mountain Bus Company. The "system" is totally ad-hoc it seems. There are no machines that check tickets, no definitive routes, and the busses are small, falling apart, have no leg room and lurch and drive like crazy weaving in and out of traffic with some 16 year old at the helm and his buddy from school swamping people in and out of the broken doors. They are also often customized with all manner of subwoofers, mini tvs, dingo balls, fur fringe, Holy Marys and Jesuses, family/girlfriend pictures etc... which makes them pretty cool I think. Usually the bus drivers play music and this can range from classic rock to rap to salsa to banda depending on taste. Despite all this I find people generally accommodating and not too put off by the hassles of bus life. This is not to say that people are greeting eachother with smiles and enjoying the experience. No one likes the bus. No one likes the metro anywhere really. And always, everything is moving too slow, but some people realize the probs that arise when you are either lugging some crazy black plastic bag full of clothing or trying to get across town with three toddlers and a baby and a crazy black plastic bag full of clothing and often help out by giving/making room or at least coping without freaking out and generally realizing that they might be in the same situation tomorrow. All that said, It can drain your nerves and often I end up falling asleep with my backpack in my lap if I'm lucky enough to get a seat. It's nice to have the hot weather back too, but it also makes the streets hotter and more oppressive.

Here's a snapshot of a more modest bi-level through Reforma in Polanco at rush hour. The only plus to this I can think of is that you can sometimes use traffic as an excuse for lateness. The minus is that it's more often than not true.

We've got another couple of friends visiting from out of town which is nice especially since the weather is being cooperative. The day they arrived we all drove out to Tepostlan and went on a gruelling hike up the mountain to a lookout where there are also some ruins and a small pyramid.

The town of Tepostlan.

HIgh eroded bluffs make the valley unique.

The hike was steep and by the time we all got back into town our legs felt like they were going to collapse especially since none of us had had a good nights sleep. The market in town was nice and we had lunch and then drove back into DF with time to spare but we just went back to sleep. We woke up the next day and they went off to Oaxaca, but they will be back later in the week.

Long time, no se...

2006-02-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

Well it's been months since I last posted here, which makes me a pretty lazy blogger, but i've been a little bit preoccupied with friends visiting from lands afar once again and Christmas / wedding stuff. Two friends from Vancouver came and visited Mexico City and Oaxaca city which they seemed to like most everything except the dry weather which I have to admit was also a shock for me moving here from the moist Canadian coast . I did manage to go on quite a few holidays over Christmas. I went for an overnighter to Taxco which is not far from Mexico City and just inside the state of Guerrero. It's a nice, small town that clings to a mountainside with super tiny mazelike euro-streets all over the place. The market is so confusing and full of stalls and tarps that it's easy to get lost. It's actually one of my favorite places just outside of Mexico City, plus it was hotter which made me happy as it's been cold and dry here. Unfortunately, I took photos on a camera that I don't have the cable for so I can't give you any photos right now. Read and Imagine.

Then... On to Veracruz where Ale and I went to have New Years with some family friends and their whole extended family in a small ranching town off the tourist map called Juanita.

There is a local Veracusanian custom that involves putting a large amount of hand made fireworks into a stuffed effigy of a "viejo" or old man. You then set him on fire and literally, totally blow him up publicly to usher in the New Year. I'm not completely sure what the symbolism of blowing up the old guy means, but I'm pretty sure it's about renewal and such. It was good fun though.

The gulf coast is beautiful and Veracruz has many interesting things to see. We went to an area called

Catemaco where they have big mangroves and lagoons meeting the sea, and lot's of

bugs and jungly plant life. There are a fair amount of wildlife preserves around here and I'm told the place is known for it's natural beauty and from what my eyes told me, it's true.

It's very different from Mexico City here. The people are maybe more "caribbean?". Anyway, it's hot and the sea food is good. There seems to be a lot of dancing, music and celebrating during festive times. Sea food in Mexico City isn't rare but it's not all over the place like it is on the coasts. In DF it's usually more expensive if you want the high quality fare and not as fresh probably, but I'm no expert.

Coming from Vancouver though I've always been a big fan of fish and clams and all that so it was nice to get a taste. I just realized that if you say, "I'm a big fan of fish and clams.." you sound kind of straight. It's like something a lame neighbor says in order to be funny in a movie or something. Anyway, who cares, next topic-

I've been reading all the news about the Canadian Federal Election. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get it together to vote out of country. I guess you can all blame me and others like me for not "rocking the vote" or whatever. Anyway, it looks like Steven Harper is going to steer the boat in more or less the same direction as per usual. However for those of my friends whose checks have "Government of Canada" written on the upper left hand side - sorry double-time. Mexico is having a vote this year too and it's a pretty heated race. Apparently they were trying to get out of country voters to participate this year as there are an estimated 20 mil or so Mexicans living in the States who generally don't vote. After spending millions registering them etc... there were 5000 or so new voters. Boondoggle city. I guess when you're busting ass picking apples in Bellingham, who gets to sit in the red chair in the Zocalo is a pretty logistical and ideological far away idea and I can concur.

Uh, well after getting back to DF from Veracruz I journeyed with Ale's family to Acapulco for a weekend wedding! Woah. I'd never been and Acapulco's pretty dazzling to say the least. Basically, geographically its a deep bay surrounded by mountains. The temperature, beach and coastline are amazing, if you can overlook the solid wall of 1000 room hotels standing at attention on the beach and gazing, expensively out to sea. There is an "Old Acapulco" which is near the bay, but sort of climbs up the mountainside. This is where most acapulcans live. It's similar to many Mexican cities, but the contrast between the crumbling colonialness and Mexicaness of the old town and the glitz of the hotel strip is pretty intense and it's meaning will not escape the more querying tourist. The wedding actually wasn't in Acapulco proper but a 20 min drive away in a little beach zone called "Pie de la Cuesta".

Here the vibe was much more laid back and the hotels less extravagant. The ocean is not protected by a bay here and the waves were a bit too violent for normal surf fun, but we did some swimming and the wedding was really nice right on the beach and pretty low key, but fun in the end. A lot of people in Mexico don't like Acupulco because it's totally over touristed and over developed and a holidayland in no small way, but the area and the ocean are truly beautiful but as I said before you have to overlook the "Tony Roma's, Planet Hollywoods, malls, and other assorted conglomerates that have descended full-force. One could view Vancouver in the same way IE: new casino conference centre slash cruise ship port of call going up ocean front but it's not like you're going to tell your visiting friends to go down there for Tony Roma's unless you're doing it ironically or something weird like that but there's nothing really that ironic about Tony Romas is there?

Que tu Quieres?

2005-12-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Well. Time has passed quickly and yet another crazy Christmas season is upon us here in Mexico City. The streets are plugged with all manner of stalls and crowds of people shopping for presents. As for me, I've been sick and my nose has been plugged with all manner of mucus flows. I caught what I would consider a fairly normal winter cold and was in bed for a coupla days, but upon recovery I contracted yet another flu-like sickness which lasted for another week of snotty achy misery. It's been a terrible month for my blown and battered nostrils and it seems like I haven't smelled anything for ages. At least my appetites back and I'm fully on the road to recovery.

I went to the Centro De Abastos a few weeks ago with Bernie. The Centro De Abastos, if not by sheer volume of stuff sold, then by it's massive expanse is one of the biggest markets in the world. It lies in the far reaches of the city near the Airport and is simply a conglomeration of hundreds, maybe thousands, of wearhouses, loading docks, and trucks.

Practically all the edible goods that come into Mexico City come through this place where they are re-distributed to the stores and restaurants in the city. It resembles a gigantic, prison or underground parking garage. It has it's own police force, banks, and food vendors. Inside are causeways full of men with palate jacks, carts and dollys literally running from place to place loaded with boxes of stuff.

You can shop here like a regular housekeeper, but most of the sellers are interested only in bulk purchases. As you walk around you notice whole wear-houses full of limes, or oranges, or even piñatas. Men barter in front of walls of onions and towers of spinach.

The halls seem to go on forever; and this is just the produce section. There is a whole other building for the fresh and frozen fish. There is a flower market. There are dry goods, wet goods, spilled goods everywhere, rats probably gorging themselves somewhere, and most of all there is a never-ending sense of urgency as everything must go as soon as possible to hit the streets where again it will be hawked to the likes of me before the lettuce wilts and the papayas turn.

The market begins to receive at 3AM I'm told and it goes non-stop until 3PM when things start to die down. It's a pretty crazy but interesting place.

Driving Reforma

2005-11-28T19:54:00.000-08:00

Reforma is a like Mexico Cities' answer to the Champs Elisee. That may not mean much to you if you've never been to France or Paris for that matter, but lets just say it's one of those big, grand, wide, boulevards lined with trees and statues and fountains. It is one of the focal points of DF and besides being lined with trees, it is lined with the tall and imposing towers of Mexico's banking, government, and business centers. The names are pretty well known: Citibank, Scotia Bank, Sears, Bancomer, Bankity Bank-etrade-dot Bank. I wish at times that there were some more interesting businesses on Reforma, but, well that's how it is. The street itself is pretty impressive though. There are some nice statues and it's pleasant to walk down at times as there are free art exhibitions quite often and you can always buy some chips drenched in Valentina sauce or something and there are lots of beautiful old stone benches to sit on. On either side of this street are nice neighborhoods with tree lined streets and fountains of their own, but nothing in DF compares to the grandness of Reforma. Oh, and usually it's totally clogged with cars from 5am to 11pm.

These pics were snapped while moving down a surprisingly sparse Reforma on a particularly dark and bronze-skied day. I'm not sure if it was because of air quality but the light was a little surreal so these turned out dark. That building is the largest in Latin America and called the Torre Mayor which can usually be seen from most areas in Mexico City.

Far behind the ever-present paper vendor is the famous Angel of Independence which is a nice sculpture sitting atop an unmodest tower and ringed with one of the most confusing traffic glorietas that I have ever navigated; in that the traffic moves alternately in both directions. Anyway, it's beautiful and well, old too; ancient even. I'm told that Reforma was one of the main thoroughfares or promenades in existence when the Spanish arrived in Mexico City for the first time, and knowing a little about the way the Aztecs built cities in those days, it was probably pretty "grand" then too. I'm just going to say the word, "grand" one more time. "grand". There. I said it.

Please, sir... May I have some more?

2005-11-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been eating again as we all must, and, as you can imagine, I've been eating some interesting stuff. Mexico city is big enough that it attracts healthy amounts of people from all over the country so as the people here say, "What happens in Mexico, happens in Mexico City!" In many ways this is true despite the many people outside of DF who may despise such elitist urban chants from the snobs in the big city. It does seem that you can get almost anything you can get and experience almost anything you can experience in Mexico in Mexico City albeit with a twist; ie: there's someone stealing your rear view mirrors and smog everywhere. Foodwise this is doubly true.

There is a kind of soup called Pozole here that is very popular. There are even franchises dedicated to Pozole. It's basically kind of like a corn stew with pork strips in a broth. There are huge chewy pieces of a large variety of corn inside. This is a type of Pozole they make in Guererro state that we bought from a restaurant called Casa Licha; a hole in the wall nestled in a unassuming, almost hidden neighborhood street. My friend Bernie somehow came into knowledge of this place and takes us there sometimes as there is really no way I could ever navigate to this place without full knowledge of the city to say the least. Casa Licha serves food from Guererro. There is a green herb oil on the surface (maybe oregano?) which makes this type "verde". People eat pozole as a snack or as a whole meal and this place seems to be very popular on the weekends. It's one of those places that is known to have good pozole, but is not located in a popular neighborhood. As far as I can tell there are quite a few places to eat in DF that serve very good authentic food that can't be found easily, yet people go the distance to ferret out these places as many Mexicans seem to be pretty discerning when it comes to local fare. The pozole here is very good. I've had street market Pozole and while it fills the stomach it was full of dubious meat pieces and hard bits that were a bit too, uh, "rustic" for my taste, but I've had good stuff now and I can say I like it maybe almost as much as your average Chilango- if there is such a thing.

These are chalupitas, or small Guererro versions of the chalupa. It's basically a hard little cup shaped tortilla with pork strips on top again with some chile, onion and light seasoning smothered in a sweetish sauce. They are appetizers and super delish.

these are Tortas Ahogadas we got at a popular restaurant that serves food from Guadalajara. Guadalajara is in Jalisco state and the second biggest city in Mexico. I've heard it's a nice city and it must be full of people with iron stomachs because this dish was hands down the hottest dish I've eaten in Mexico so far. It's basically a torta (usually elaborate Mexican sandwich made from a Kaiser Roll, but in this case the bread is French style) floating in a very very hot salsa. It's messy and the salsa is so hot they give you a plastic glove! This is so you don't damage your manicure or heaven forbid have the salsa seep into a hangnail or something. I'm not kidding. I used the glove even though I felt like an employee of Subway.

When Ale, Bernie, and Josefina and I sat down to eat I was pre-occupied talking or something. As we ordered our Tortas Ahogadas I made the mistake of not paying attention to how the others were ordering. Josefina is from Australia and ordered "no ahogada" Bernie and Ale are Mexicans and ordered "half ahogada". I wasn't paying attention and just said, "No, I'll take it as it comes..." Suffice to say that while it tasted delicious and good, plastic glove aside, it was basically inedible to me. I had to rescue the thing from the pool of lava salsa it was bathing in and revert to the "no ahogada" setting. However, I've been back since and ordered it with Half ahogada which is the best compromise. No ahogada was slightly boring like a sandwich sitting in a pool of watered down Heinz, but full force... I dunno- You'd have to be a serious eater of hot food to pass that without uh... Repercussions to put it mildly. Still I highly recommend these foods as they are not only delicious, but, well, never mind... They're delicious- what more does a food need on it's resume?

Meandering profound thoughts we already know to be true

2005-11-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

lately the house has been filling with dust. There is a lot of dust in the air here. In addition we have a cat which always adds to the general amount of dust and hair floating around. Ale's been applying to schools in the UK and Canada so I've been navigating through the somewhat complex pages of various institutions trying to help her find out all the things you need to be accepted and get scholarships etc, but it's been difficult as It's been so long since I've been in a University. It seems like it's become a lot harder to get into school since I applied. School is big business these days. Long gone are the days when people deluded themselves into thinking that education wasn't totally necessary to make a decent living. School is also big biz in Mexico where many people don't get the opportunity to go even to high school. There are many private "schools" that teach languages, computers, business, trades, or anything that seems more useful than whatever gig you happen to be stuck with at the time. Jobs that pay a decent living wage are hard to come by here and seem to be often gotten though a connection or friend of some kind. Education isn't just the key to a better life, in many cases it could be the key to the better life for the whole family. Anyway, it's not like I'm talking about anything that everyone doesn't already know so I'll just shut up about school now.

It's cold and grey today. I was over at a friends house last night and we had a few beers and I talked about Guatemala with a friend who'd recently been there. There are a few towns that were completely buried by mudslides during the hurricane season. Apparently some houses and people are too difficult to dig for so the entire area has become a grave. It's cold in here when there isn't any sun. I actually feel a little vulnerable. In Canada it never really mattered for me how cold it was outside because I always felt I could run somewhere warm like a coffee shop or exactly like a coffee shop, or simply turn up the heat, but as most dwellings here lack insulation or heating it gets chilly in the winter sometimes. Many businesses have heating but many also don't. The other night we were way out near the freeway at this Taco place. Taco places are generally like a lunch counter and totally open to the outside so it was cold. I found myself actually wanting to be seated near the giant, rotating hunk of meat because occasionally they fire up the propane burner and these gusts of heat would come out even though you always smell like a huge greasy taco after. I never thought I'd feel comfortable and familiar sitting next to a dripping, rotating hunk of meat under harsh fluorescent light, watching a dubbed Steven Segal movie on a black and white TV while huge double trailers kick up dust near the Ford plant - Or did I? As we all know - standards change and why not?

El Dia de los Muertissimos!

2005-11-04T10:41:00.000-08:00

This week was the fun and colorful DAY OF THE DEAD celebration in Mexico. Many people even get a day off work on the 2nd. so that tells you something about how serious it is. Basically, the idea is that your dead ancestors and relatives are honored on this day and will return to take part in the festivities.

Many people make altars of candles, elaborate seasonal flowers, photographs and candy skulls to attract them. Some offerings are more elaborate and have food dishes and other things the dead may have liked while alive. On the Day of the Dead Generally there is a party on the night of the 1st followed by a day of eating and general holidayness on the 2nd. In places like Oaxaca and Michoacan, (where I've read that the thousands of years old celebration originated) the festivities are even more elaborate. People go to cemeteries and pay respect to relatives or friends who have passed on over the years, maybe have a party and then many stay the entire night in a vigil.

In Mexico City there are many huge offerings made by institutions, delegations of the city, Universities, and other groups. Many were on display in the Zocalo which was packed with onlookers, performers, and offerings. There were free concerts and some cultural centers had art shows and performances dedicated to the day.

Here's an offering with a skull made of beans - How much more Mexican can you get?

After wandering around downtown, we went to our friend Bernardo's place and made a small altar. The orange flower petals are called the Flor de Muerto or zempoalxochitl in Nauhuatl and are generallly part of every altar and can be seen all over the place in the city on this day. It was a good time and a uniquely Mexican holiday. Next time around I'd like to go to Patzquaro in Michoacan or Oaxaca for the Day to see how it is they do it there.

Posting when life seems unpostable

2005-10-31T10:44:00.000-08:00

Well, there have been some developments here and there. I can't say life is entirely un-postable, but it is getting hard for me to come up with new material. Lately, I've been thinking of actually, "producing" something like a post that was actually planned and then posted to, but in some way that's a bit un-bloglike or something. I dunno- I do know that there are a few out there who do check in semi-regularly so I will attempt to cram something in this post that you can while away the next few minutes looking at even though my upstairs neighbor is blasting techno- and I'm not talking Glastonbury the-latest and greatest techno but an endless mix of "I'm too sexy for my shirt.." fare, but maybe that's better...

Uh, a couple of weeks ago Ale and I volunteered for the annual food drive for the Mexico Cities food bank, known as "Alimento Para Todos". We were volunteers along with thousands of others nationally who participated in the day long drive.

I didn't know this before but conscription is mandatory in Mexico and all eligible, young males must do a year long military service where you receive the mandatory amount of getting yelled at, push - ups, and target practice in order to become a real man. Fortunately for the Food Bank these guys are also available to do some useful community service in the form of door knocking and collecting non-perishables from the locals cupboards for the food bank.

It was a pretty amazing haul. The food bank was completely full of sacks of rice, beans, tinned food, and other stuff. I believe it was a pretty successful campaign.

In other news I got lost driving in the city the other night. It was a bit stressful. I was supposed to be miles away picking up Ale at her mother's place but i took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up going in circles in one of DF's less desirable "hoods". There was crazy Saturday night traffic all over the place and all these street markets folding up for the night with garbage and people spilling out all over onto the confusing streets. Soon friends knew that I was lost and were calling me in the car and telling me to do this or do that which made it more crazy. Luckily, I managed to find a street I recognized and got back to my part of town, but I was really lost for a little while there. It's not always easy to know what part of the city you're in unless you can drive somewhere where you can get a view of things, like up on a freeway ramp or something.

Because much of the city is flat and the buildings tend to be similar heights and designs it can easily be confusing for a spaced out guy like me. I should try to get out more and navigate the city on my own though. I realized that while I've been to many places in DF, I don't really know the city well enough to just venture out unless I have a clear idea where I'm headed and how to get there. DF is not like North American cities that generally have "turnaround" routes. If you drive in the wrong street you could easily be piped miles out of your way before a route to get back to where you left off becomes available and the whole time the traffic rivers will be moving just a little faster than is comfortable and people will be weaving and honking and cops will be blearing out of their loudspeakers to "move on" etc...

Here we go again...

2005-10-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

The familiar sight of poor people wading though water. As many know from the news Mexico and Central America have been badly hit by tropical storms and hurricanes. Chiapas and Oaxaca have some bad flooding too. Hundreds of thousands have been effected, roads are blocked, and I think some people have died.

In lieu of the above paragraph, the weather has been cold and stormy in DF with a lot of rain rain rain. Here is a dramatic photo out the living room window of some storm clouds rolling in.
Well as you can see I'm back in the thick of things here in DF. The Distrito seems to be much the same since I left. The next important holiday is El Dia de los Muertos or "Day of the Dead" and some stores seem to already gearing up in anticipation. There is no thanksgiving in Mexico I'm told nor is there any Halloween so i won't bother anticipating the Turkey and scary pumpkin stuff although pumpkin is popular here along with zucchini and squash so I'll be getting my fair share of my deadly nightshades or whatever people are saying about those gourd vegetables now. Wasn't eggplant supposed to kill you or something? oohhh scary vegetables!

This blurry photo was taken out the window of one of our friends who just moved in down the street. Sometimes Napoles has a nice quiet neighborly feel for being right in the thick of things.

Ale had a birthday on the 28th and she and a friend who share close birthdays arranged to have a joint party at a local bar. It was a great night of dancing, singing and general party stuff. She even hired a couple of "band in a box" style performers who put on a pretty good set of Mexican classics to salsa the night away to.

A good time was had by all- and I'm glad to be back.