Intermission

One of our trip goals is to learn the Argentine tango. We expected that this would keep us occupied in Buenos Aires, but little did we guess that this would keep us up nights in Mendoza.

We looked for teachers via the internet before arriving here, and found Ana and Luis. http://www.anayluistango.com.ar. We got lucky, this couple are the heart of the tango community here. They hold group classes three times a week at a community center, give private lessons, and organize ‘Milongas’ or dances at a dinner club two other nights.

Tom called them on Tuesday, the day after we got here to ask about lessons, they suggested we come talk to them at the studio that very evening at 9:00 PM. This was pretty late - we didn’t realize that this was the START time for their group lesson. Before you could say (tan)go, we were in the group, walking to the tango rhythm for the next two hours.

All instructions are in Spanish, so you quickly learn the words for left, right, forward and back, but it seemed that our feet were hard wired in English. None the less, with coaching from Ana and Luis, we managed to move in a halting tango-like fashion.

Tango is a very physical dance. It has its roots in Buenos Aires in the late 1800’s when there was a lot of immigration from Europe — men who had left their families behind for better opportunities. The first dancers were men dancing with other men, with music improvised on flute, violin and guitar. . Then the tango evolved into the bordellos.

The women of these houses gave the current costumes for tango their inspiration. The posture of the dancers is your first hint of what is to follow—the woman leans her upper torso well forward of a normal position, draping herself on her partner. This is very unlike the ballroom dances of waltz and foxtrot. When you see two good dancers, your first thought is “Get a room!”.

The drill for the group lessons is simple – first about 20-30 minutes of practicing basics – walking, turning, following the music. Then Ana and Luis demonstrate a few beginner and intermediate steps. The rest of the class is practice.

The practice group is very friendly and supportive – the better dancers pair off together, but make a point of helping the beginners. One couple bring their 2-year-old daughter, who has mastered the Tango walk. Ana and Luis circulate giving pointers and encouragement.

We followed up with another group lesson on Thursday and then a private lesson on Friday. Here’s a shot of Michelle in the private lesson with Luis:

We dropped in on their Milonga on Sunday night. It ’started’ at 9:00 PM, and we were the first to arrive at 9:15. Another couple arrived soon after – but we recognized them from the bike ride in Maipu the previous day, also early because they were also foreigners. No matter, we ordered a glass of wine and got up to dance (very, very badly – we only knew 2-3 steps).

Around 10:00 PM, dancers started to arrive – many that we recognized from the group lessons. During the evening, they made a point of coming over to dance with us – to make sure we were having a good time. Ana and Luis also dragged us out to the floor as well.

We have been ‘adopted’ into the tango family in Mendoza.

The school hosted an afternoon of wine-tasting, with one of the local experts, which we participated in.

These after-class activities are intended to provide language practice, but they are great fun.

In Cuenca, our first South American home, we took the school tour around the city centre. Aside from the barest of basic data, it may as well have been self-guided. The Spanish flowed freely over our heads but did not penetrate our skulls.

Now that we have a few more Spanish words in our lexicon, we can participate in extracurricular activities in Spanish.

It was a happy combination of the vocabulary of grape growing, wine production, flavours and scents and practical application (a.k.a drinking). It was conducted totally in Spanish. There was a range of Spanish mastery in the class, but between us (and our dictionaries), we were perfectly comfortable.

The school hosts a week-long course on wine tasting and production with daily tours to various bodegas near the city, but Tom fears for the health of our livers. Instead, we decided to explore the bodegas on our own.

So, on Saturday, we jumped on the bus to the Maipu wine district—about 15 km from where we are staying–and rented bicycles for the day. The bus system in Mendoza is remarkably efficient – well-maintained buses roar in all directions at short intervals. To pay, you swipe a smart-card when you board the bus, and the reader hands you a receipt that tells you how much credit is left.

The bikes were heavy duty workhorses, but that was probably a good thing given the main focus of the day.

Our first stop was the wine museum for a short tour. The history of wine making in the area and some of the handmade implements were on display. Interestingly, they had us sample a wine produced especially for tourists rather than a more typical vintage of the area. The tourist wine was selling for 90 Argentine pesos for 6 (about $5 a bottle). We passed on this bargain priced, but very drinkable table wine and headed for other wineries.

We particularly enjoyed our visit to the award winning Tomassi winery. It is a family-run winery with roots dating back to 1869.

The wineries here are huge, much larger than we are used to in the Niagara region, there seem to be vast tracts of suitable land. Tomassi is tiny, but it still exports wines around the world.

The same wine will be labelled in many different ways, the wines for the local markets have a simple, traditional white label with black lettering, but those for exports are much more diverse. Red and gold for China (where white cannot be used, it is the color of death), jazzy red-on-black with twist-tops for the US and UK youth market, etc..

Some of the early machinery decorated the restaurant, all hand forged chains and wooden gears. An electric motor was strapped to a bucket-brigade contraption that hoisted crushed grapes into the fermentation vats,  the original design would have used a steam engine. The owner who showed it to us said that they used to burn the dried remains of the fermentation to power the steam – and we could almost imagine the sweet smells and sounds on a warm sunny day like this one.

We left our lunch order with the restaurant, and went off to do a tasting, postponing the important decision about which wine to have with lunch until after we had sampled the wares.

We chose to sit out in a sun dappled patio. We passed on dessert (which had been created with all of the notes of the dessert wine that accompanied it)–maybe on our way back later that day. While we in Ontario stress our grapes with cold temperatures to make ice wine, here they simply stop irrigating the grapes to concentrate the flavours.

We left reluctantly–the owner was a delightful host who went out of his way to show us his bodega.

We wended our way past olive groves and made a stop at an oliveria. We were surprised at how inexpensive extra virgin olive oil and assorted olive pastes were ($5 USD for a half-litre of top-quality olive oil), but were not tempted to stock up and cart bottles around for the next few months.

Our final stop on Saturday was a chocolate and flavours boutique. They made liquors and savoury products in addition to a variety of chocolates. It was a hard decision indeed—which chocolate liquor was better—the chocolate cafe, the chocolate hazelnut, the chocolate banana…. We tasted about a dozen flavors – hard work, but someone has to do it.

We fell in love with the dolce de leche combined with coffee flavour, and rode happily back to the bike shop with a stock in Tom’s backpack.  Sorry, you shouldn’t expect any to be left by the time we return to Toronto.

There is a uniquely Argentine expression of endearment that we now understand: “Sus mi dolce de leche” (you are my…).

All in all, a day full of sweetness.

It’s been a few days since the last post. Tom’s mom has already written to us, worried that we hadn’t posted any blogs in the last few days – are we ok?. Certainly we have lots to write about. The reason is that we are exhausted. Here’s why…

We have moved south and are now making our home in Mendoza, Argentina.

Mendoza is a city of about 1M people – half in the city and half in the surrounding suburbs. It lies on the Argentine side of the Andes, on the flat plains – think of Calgary - with a magnificent view of the mountains to the west.

The weather is warm – it’s spring here and the sun beats down. It’s already about 80 degrees at noon. The peak of summer will be very hot, but we will be gone by then.

Mendoza’s streets are lined with trees that give a welcome shade, and also give the city a leafy, comfortable look. The wide sidewalks are tiled, and the polished woodwork on buildings gleams like jewelry. The air is clean and the cars are well-maintained.

Mendoza is the heart of the Argentine wine industry. It’s warm enough to grow grapes and olives, which are the main products in this region. Mendoza is also a great jumping-off point to go hiking in the mountains and there are thermal hot-springs nearby.

Although the city is quite compact, we have been walking for miles. We are staying with a family, about a 30 minute hike from the school. Since we are not expected back to the casa for lunch, we have gone exploring the centro after class - checking out the cafe’s and sights. The city has some spectacular architecture – old colonial buildings, art-deco wedding cakes, tiled parks with ornate fountains, you name it.

We were used to having a quiet lunch in Ecuador, but we always made a plan for the afternoon. So when we arrived here, we booked a few afternoon activities as well. The school offers a number of afternoon activities, and the city offers many more.

Mistake. Here, businesses open between 8:30 and 9:00 (our Spanish classes start at 8:30), and stay open until about 1:00 PM (when our classes end). Then everything closes, and people head home for a LONG siesta. Businesses reopen around 5:00 or 6:00 stays open until about 9:00. Then people head home for dinner. Then the night-life starts.

At 7:30 PM, the restaurants aren’t open – the chairs are upside-down on the tables. At 9:00, anyone you see in a restaurant is likely a tourist. The locals start to arrive around 10:00, often with small children. A proper time for adults to dine is 11:00 or later.

We didn’t know. We decided to take a Tango group-lesson, which started at 9:00. We thought that was unusually late, but figured the teachers had day jobs or the venue wasn’t available.

We had participated in a 2-hour wine-tasting class in the afternoon, and Michelle had booked a hairdresser for 5:00 (the earliest they would take her). And when we got home, we had homework to do. So we didn’t get a siesta before dinner.

We should have realized the situation when we had to beg our house-mother to serve us dinner early enough to race out to the class. Other students knew better – a 9:00 PM class is exactly the right time for students who want to learn BEFORE dinner.

The tango lesson was terrific - we’ll talk about tango in another posting. After the lesson, we stopped for a glass of wine in the Paseo Sarmiento, off the Plaza Independencia. It’s a big pedestrian street filled with cafe’s, bars, and restaurants. It was 11:00 PM on a Thursday night. There was live music, and the warm evening air was perfect.

Turned out the restaurant didn’t sell wine by the glass – the local custom is to order a bottle. So we got a delicious bottle of local Malbec (with a plate of local cheeses to accompany it). We settled back happily, wondering how we had ever found such a perfect place.

When we arrived, the cafe and surrounding ones were empty, and we thought they were close to closing. But as we sat and drank our wine, the seats around us started to fill up. Around 1:00, the street was rocking. But we were dead tired, we tipsily hailed a taxi home.

The next morning came too quickly for us. We struggled out of bed with our 6:30 alarm clock, but we were hung-over and ruined for the day (our professor took pity on us, spent two hours in simple conversation exercises, and didn’t assign any homework). We groaned that we had previously booked afternoon activities and had to stay awake until mid-afternoon - we hiked home afterwards and collapsed into bed. We had wanted to go to a dance club in the evening, but we just couldn’t do it.

Mendoza is a very safe and tranquil city. We are told that the only time we need to be careful is 6:00 AM on Saturday and Sunday, when the drunks are coming home.

We’re learning not to fill up the day – that afternoon siesta is critical. We’re also learning the practice of eating four times a day – breakfast at the casa, lunch at a restaurant (always a leisurely event, see below), coffee and a snack at 6:00, and dinner at 10:00 or so. (We call it the Argentine diet plan—not sure of the ultimate effect this will have on our waistlines.)

The locals also fuel their day with regular hits of excellent coffee, and mate – a tea with a mule’s kick of caffeine. We’re learning to do that too.

We are told that Buenos Aires isn’t like this. The siesta is shorter, and the workday ends earlier. Malena, our house mother, tells us that when she moved here from Buenos Aires, she was surprised that people here got into their pyjamas and settled in for a serious nap in the afternoon.

Mendoza is a lovely place. We’re going to park ourselves here longer that we had originally planned (we’re already talking about renting an apartment here for November). But until we get acclimatized to the local schedules, we may not get as many blogs posted as we were able to in Ecuador.

Well, it’s been seven weeks, and we come to the end of our stay in Ecuador. Time to look back a bit.

We’ve been totally charmed by the people we’ve met. Ecuadorians are the friendliest, most lovely people on this planet. (OK, Newfoundlanders are the friendliest, but we’re here now.)

We use an ‘cabina’ (like a phone booth, but part of a retail store) to make a phone call - by the time we finish, we are amigos with the store owner who will wave at us every time we pass his store. When we return to a coffee shop a second time, the staff greet us like we are family returning from a long trip.

We are adopted by the families that we stay with – including the kids, the in-laws, and the cousins - and they all take pleasure showing us their cities and sharing their time with us. We thought this would be a leisurely few months, with long afternoons to read, study, and loaf. But we barely have time to sit down. Ecuadorians repeatedly amazed us with their generosity and hospitality.

Families are big in Ecuador. It’s still an old-fashioned place (but unfortunately learning our North American ways). ‘Kids’ still live with their parents until they get married, and afterwards drop in to visit several times a week. Meals are still eaten at the family table.

= = =

Ecuador is huge. Not physically huge. There is so much to see, crammed into such a small space. And you can’t see it quickly - it can take 15 hours to drive from here to there, because the terrain is so rugged. Most of the roads are excellent, but the exceptions are painful.

Last year we visited the Galapagos. It is a unique experience, a week there will change the way you look at nature. People who has been there will tell you that it is NECESSARY that you visit it yourself.

Cuenca is an architectural jewel-box. Unfortunately, we can’t show it to you, as much as we want to. The narrow streets defy photography, the crowded urban kaleidoscope doesn’t translate to the still image. Take it from us, it is impossible to walk in the centro streets without grinning like a cat.

We have climbed on Chimborazo. There is a magical draw to this huge mountain – it dominates you. You cannot hike even the lowest foothills without feeling awe. And when you finally climb above the clouds and look down on them, wow.

We have cruised part of the ‘Avenue of the Volcanos’, repeating their ancient names like incantations. After a while we don’t even bother to take pictures of these spectacular mountains (“That’s Cotopaxi over there.” “Is it erupting today?” “No, seems quiet.” “OK, keep going.”).

Tungurahua - (say it as four syllables, Tun-Gue-Rah-Hua, with emphasis on all of them, sort of like saying four separate words.)

The Coast, with its spectacular beaches and balmy weather is a tourist draw. Our bad luck to be there during an ‘El Nina’ event. Anytime in the next 10 years will likely have much better weather. But it was still perfect.

We didn’t get to the ‘Oriente’ – Ecuadorians refer to their portion of the Amazon as ‘The East’. We chatted with another tourist who has just returned, she was gushing about how amazing, how wonderful it was. But Michelle was looking at the insect bites up and down her legs – the size of alligator bites - and vetoed a visit. (Hint: if you go, wear full-body spandex at all times).

We saw just a fraction of the wonders of this country. It’s a magical place.

= = =

The saddest part of Ecuador is the poverty. This should be a rich country, it has natural resources coming out of its ears, and the people are natural entrepreneurs. Like much of South America, it is hobbled by bad government and corruption. But Ecuador has some unique challenges.

Education is important here. Parents dig deep into their pockets to send their kids to University. But people here simply don’t read – it’s not a ‘reading culture’. We have not seen books in any of the homes we visited. Bookshops are rare – especially in the smaller towns - and shabby. The big-city newspapers are closer in content to the Forest Hill Crier than the Toronto Globe and Mail. It’s OK, we hear. The kids read on the internet. But of course they don’t.

We were a little surprised at the high-school schedule in Manta. Lots of kids, not many schools, so they run three shifts. Carlos’s children are on the late shift – they start classes at 4:00 PM and finish around 8:00 PM. I wonder how effective that is.

There aren’t a lot of jobs waiting for University graduates, Ecuador isn’t part of the 21^th century knowledge economy yet. The export economy runs on oil, fish, bananas, flowers, and ceramics. Ecuador grows the best coffee and cocoa in the world, and exports it to be processed.

Almost 20% of the citizens are working overseas (2M out of 13M citizens). That’s huge – because the 13M includes children and retired people. Everyone seems has a brother or cousin in the US or Spain or somewhere. Every cabbie says he has spent a few years working in the US. Remittances drive the consumer economy.

A construction worker in Spain earns almost 10 times what a similar worker in Ecuador makes. But every newspaper has a sad story of expatriates having to return to Ecuador – the global financial crisis is drying up work. These are huge surges of people.

One last story – so typically Ecuadorian – about training and process and trying to get anything done.  Ecuadorians are lovely, but there isn’t the management layer or commitment to skills and training. Perhaps it’s because salaries are so low.

When we are in Quito, we stay at the Hilton Colon. It’s a 5-star hotel, a bit stuffy but very comfortable and has a terrific location. Rooms are $128 a night, which is very high in Ecuador, but I’ve paid that much for the Holiday Inn Express in Duck’s Butt, Missouri.

We know we’re coming back for one last night, so we walk down to the front desk and ask if we can book a room. Yes sir, it’s $180 a night. That’s the rack rate, we have always paid the lower rate. We argue, the clerk consults with his supervisor and comes back to tell us we can have the lower rate if we book it ourselves on the internet.

Huh? We’re standing right in front of him. But we can’t sway him. We figure we’ll get the travel agent to book it when she books our air tickets back to Quito.

But that doesn’t work either. The travel agent believes the rate is $128 per person. No, we explain – simply look as the last time you booked us there. But she is adamant, the rate is per person.

I try the Hilton Colon website, it redirects to the US Hilton site and I don’t get a good feeling that a reservation will actually be waiting for me when I arrive.

Almost across the street is the Windsor Hotel - a nice looking hotel that has a sign offering rooms for $39 (a bit more for double occupancy) including free internet.

I paid almost that much alone for the internet service at the Hilton – although that includes having a bellboy in a funny hat deliver a secret code to the room). The Windsor website simply sends an email, I sent one and got a confirmation back in about 3 minutes.

www.windsorhotelecuador.com and it was perfect. We’ll be staying there next time too.

So the Hilton has lost about $200 in revenue that night (a month’s salary for one of their staff) and a repeat customer. How much money do they save by not training their staff?

= = =

So goodbye Ecuador, and Thank You. We’ve had a wonderful time, an amazing time.

We’ll be back.

We have all played a version of this parlour game where you get others on your team to guess a word without using it yourself. If you are friends of Jeff and Stacia, you have probably played it many times.

When it is your turn, you talk your way around the chosen word and hope that your team mates will quickly figure out the excellent clues you are giving them—for example you might describe “astronaut” as someone who likes to be out of this world.

We’re getting good at this game, because we play it all the time. With our fledgling Spanish vocabulary we talk our way around words all the time - simply because we don’t have the one we really want.

Our Spanish teacher had us do a version of this game on Friday. I call it the miscommunication game.

I started with the verb “Dormir”, to sleep. I thought it would be simple—what you do at night—but Tom had different ideas. He was going through the seemingly infinite variety of list of reflexive verbs we had learned, like “to go to bed”, “to get undressed”, and “to brush your teeth”. After several minutes of trying to convey this basic human need, in desperation I resorted to singing “Frere Jacques”. Time over, no points.

So it was now Tom’s turn to give clues about his verb. He gave out excellent clues. Unfortunately, the clues were for “Sentir” (to feel) - a verb very close in spelling (but regrettably not in meaning) to his assigned verb “Sentar” (to sit) — 5 points for presentation and creativity, 0 points for execution.

He had both the teacher and I wiping the tears of laughter from our eyes.

It is not a coincidence that our host mother would look up from some of the conversations with Tom, nodding her head in a “that’s nice dear, but I have no idea what you are saying” sort of way.

We are refining our skills in this game and will be ready for future parties.

Our Spanish teacher announces that we will play the story game. Michelle and I will have 3 minutes to work on a story using both regular and reflexive verb forms in past tense. Then we will exchange papers, and continue working on the other’s story for another 3 minutes, then we exchange again.

So here’s how my story starts (in an English translation):

This morning, while my spouse was showering, I was abducted by a UFO. They took me to their planet ‘Garbanzo’ and made bad experiments on me. I knew I had to escape, and …”.

Three minutes were up. Just in time. I’m pleased with the progress we are making in Spanish. And I can’t wait to see how Michelle is going to finish this story…

There is huge poverty in Ecuador. Employee earnings are low - $200 per month is a typical wage. But productivity is also low.

We’ve been watching a team of about 20 workers build a small two-story building. Even homes here have a concrete skeleton – it is cheap and durable, and wood is expensive.

To build with concrete, you simply create a form and then pour the concrete to create the shape you want. You embed some steel into the concrete to give it tensile strength.

Once the columns are poured, the second floor starts with delivery of a load of bamboo ‘logs’. They are sawed into suitable lengths to support the floor which will soon be poured. These poles are meticulously assembled, and the second-floor formwork is built.

It’s a lot of work – especially since only hand-tools are used. The jobsite doesn’t have electricity.

Labor is cheap enough to send someone into the jungle to chop down the bamboo, to have workers cut them to size with hand-saws, and to assemble them into a skeleton strong enough to hold the weight of the concrete.

When it comes time to pour the concrete, there won’t be a cement truck. A few bags of cement will be mixed with water in a small gasoline-powered mixer, and then hauled up by hand in buckets.

This will be a 1,500 square foot building, two stories high with no basement. It won’t be ready anytime soon. And the quality of the finished product is greatly below what we would consider acceptable.

In fairness, the quality of work on this project looks pretty good, and the project is moving forward. We see many projects that were obviously staffed with the lowest-paid untrained workers available – and the results are as expected.

We pay construction workers more per day than these guys make in a month. But we can, because our productivity is higher. During the summer, I watched a team this size assemble an apartment building across from my office, a high tower with a 50,000 sf floorplate. Every 4-5 days they would add another floor, and they were including plumbing stacks, electrical conduit and ductwork as they went.

Construction workers in Ecuador work as hard as our guys. Our productivity is higher because we back our workers up with investment, technology, and training.

These guys are the working poor. It’s hard to imagine how they survive on their wages. But unless productivity goes up, they are being paid as much as they are worth.

= = =

There is a lot of construction going on in Manta (and everywhere else we have been in Ecuador). We are told that most of this construction is funded by Ecuadorians who are working abroad, and building their retirement castles using their hard-currency earnings.

Of the 13 million Ecuadorians, about 2 million work in Europe or North America – the largest number are in Spain. Their remittances form the largest single source of Ecuador’s revenue.

The major exodus was in 1998-1999, when a combination events destroyed the economy. Low oil prices (in 1998, oil was under $7 a barrel) and a fisheries-destroying El Nino event eliminated jobs. Hyper-inflation, a one-year bank holiday (where many banks didn’t reopen), and conversion to US dollars wiped out savings. It was quite horrible.

So the Ecuadorians scattered, looking for work. So many left, in fact, that a labor shortage developed on the farms and in the lowest-paid jobs in Ecuador. Laborers from Peru and Columbia (even poorer countries) poured into Ecuador.

Things are getting better. The horror of inflation has receded, now that the Banco Central is only responsible for running a few museums. But no one here trusts the banks with their savings anymore.

A home is an excellent form of savings, and construction is an excellent way to recycle earnings back into the Ecuador economy.

An interesting side effect: more small building projects sit ‘abandoned’ than you could imagine. They run out of steam and stop half constructed, nothing more than a concrete skeleton. But if you think of these homes as savings accounts, it may not be a disaster – simply a hiccup in the earnings of an overseas worker. When he next has some free cash, he will build a bit more of his retirement home.

(There is a different story for the huge number of occupied, but clearly unfinished homes. It is common to build a bigger concrete skeleton than you can afford, finish and occupy the bottom floor, and leave the remainder to the children to build sometime in the future.)

Borrowing is expensive, the going rate for a home mortgage here is about 20%. It’s not because of inflation or macro liquidity – the currency is the US dollar.

But there is a hesitancy to lend. The legal framework for contracts and property has been corroded by years of corruption and shoddy practice. Investors have little certainty of getting their money back. Inconvenient contracts can be simply ignored, and every rule can be broken with a suitable backhand. Everyone we talk to has a story of someone losing their business or life’s savings to corruption, malfeasance, political cronyism, or populist opportunism.

There is little expectation of relief from the courts. Judges are sponsored and appointed by political parties, and are beholden to the politicians and their wealthy supporters.

There is also a tax problem – people here are not used to paying taxes (especially the rich). If we use VISA to pay for a hotel or service, there is often a 10% surcharge on the bill to cover the extra costs.

So businessmen operate on a cash basis. Families save in the ‘Mattress Bank’.

But the result of low savings and high borrowing rates is a shortage of capital, that strangles local businesses and keeps the job growth rate low. And that’s a shame, because that’s how productivity is improved and how people climb out of poverty.

The new President promises action on corruption and tax avoidance (and has made some movement on both). But he doesn’t understand contracts. In recent weeks, he has threatened oil companies with expropriation if they didn’t invest to his satisfaction, and has ripped up a contract with a Brazilian company.

So people work hard, but unproductively, in continuing poverty.

La Crucita is a small beach town about an hour’s drive north of Manta. It’s considered the nicest beach in the area, and a favorite for Manta residents. The Manta beaches tend to be crowded, and the water isn’t as clean around the big city.

We were there on the Friday of the National Holiday weekend, with Zoila (our host), and Gianpaulo and Maria-Elena (’Coty’), two of her grandchildren. Coty is a university student in Quito, visiting for the long weekend.

The beach was pretty empty – it’s the ‘off season’, cold and overcast. Although Ecuador doesn’t have seasons in the sense that Canada does, there is a definite warm-wet period (our spring) and cold-dry period (now) in the coastal areas, caused by seasonal shifts in the ocean currents.

Of course, hot and cold is relative. We ARE at the equator, so seasons aren’t that dramatic. Today, it’s a comfortable 70 degrees. In the warm season, it goes up to about 85. People here shiver when they hear we are from Canada, but Ecuador’s ‘warm’ areas are cooler than a hot Canadian summer.

The town of Crucita is only 2-3 blocks thick along the beach. The ‘boardwalk’ is a busy chaotic road, lined on the other side with restaurants and stalls selling tourist ’stuff’. Dogs (and chickens) wander in the quieter parts. Fishermen pull their small boats up on the sand.

The beach itself is somewhat stony, but spotlessly clean and quite lovely. Anywhere else, there would be a civic program to gather up the stones and maximize the value of this tourist attraction, but this is Ecuador.

There is a high mountain behind the town, and one of the local attractions is Hang-Gliding. There are always a few colourful gliders slowly working their way down to the beach.

It isn’t a great day. Too cold to go into the crystal-clear water (and even if the air was warmer, the water is frigid). Coty settled onto the beach while Michelle and I stuck our toes into the water.

Crucita’s boardwalk is a nice place to hang, have some ceviche (marinated fish, shrimp, and calamari), and people-watch from restaurant patios.

We watched a local chef haggle with a fisherman over his bucket of shrimps – we couldn’t hear them but the negotiations were highly theatrical. The chef was clearly unhappy with the tiny size of the shrimps, the fisherman clearly unhappy with the price – sweeping his bucket away and shooing the chef off. After several rounds of this, they settled. And then chatted amicably – clearly they were old friends and this was a daily ritual.

The day draws to an end, and the boats come in. We leave this magical spot and start our drive back to Manta.

The cost of a tour of the Galapagos is out of range for most Ecuadorians. When we went with Dale and Nelly last year, it was the most expensive vacation we had ever taken.

Isla de la Plata is known as the ‘Poor Person’s Galapagos’ (the expression sounds better in Spanish). It is a popular alternative for locals.

You start your trip in Puerto Lopez, a sleepy beach town. See the previous story on how to get there. Our luxurious day-trip with guide and lunch to Isla de la Plata costs $40/person (including transfers to the hotel, no tuk-tuk this time), plus foreigners are dinged an extra $20 admission by the National Park which manages the island.

Even so, there are only six of us on the boat – all foreigners. It is off-season, cold, and wet. Even a National Holiday long-weekend doesn’t tempt the locals to this tour.

The first entertainment of the day – even before you board - are the pelicans. It’s not clear whether they are fishing or simply posing for us. This guy is scooping up some anchovies in his big beak. It is impossible to watch pelicans without smiling.

Next is a boat ride to the island. The boats are fairly small, and it’s a long ride – about 90 minutes straight out to sea. We had perfectly calm weather, and still the waves were enormous. We wouldn’t want to be out in that boat in a storm.

The island is a medium-sized rocky outcropping. There is a visitor’s center (with bathrooms). There are two hiking paths, basically one looping the north end of the island and one looping the south. Each hike takes about two-and-a-half hours. We pick the north hike, which will take us into Blue-Footed Booby and Nascar Booby territory. The other path has Red-Footed Boobies and Frigate Birds (but without the red puff balloons, this isn’t mating season).

The Blue-Footed Booby is pretty easy to identify when you get close enough.

And it’s hard not to get close, since they are nesting all along the path. Because of the El Nina phenomenon, there has been much more rain than usual, and the undergrowth is extremely thick (look behind the guy above). The Boobies have learned that the path is safe. So they build their nests right down the middle of it.

This is a mother sitting on an egg. You can tell the males from the females by their eyes – the males have bigger irises.

So we carefully step past them, often detouring into the undergrowth ourselves to avoid contact. They whistle and honk at us threateningly, but don’t have the least fear. (One bird seemed to have learned that honking and darting at a tourist is an amusing way to make them jump, and was doing it as a game.)

These birds look ungainly on the ground, but they are amazingly graceful in the air. They are fearsome fishermen, diving deep into the ocean.

The other denizen of this path is the Nascar Booby, with its brilliant black-and-white plumage.

The Nascars have numerous young birds in their nests. Unlike the adults, the juveniles are snowy white.

We did not see any Albatross, although they are a common sight on the island. They are migratory birds and this is not their season. Similarly, the Sea Lion Beach was empty.

The island is surrounded by lovely reefs, and several scuba boats had their flags up. After our hike, we go snorkeling off our boat. Huge schools of fish surround us. Sea turtles go sailing by (they lay their eggs on the island’s beaches). But the water is FREEZING - the cold Humbolt current comes straight from Antartica without seeming to warm at all. We only manage a few minutes in the water.

Then the cold boat ride back (now colder, since we are still blue from swimming ). The sun is hidden by a thick grey cloud from horizon to horizon. The spray of the boat keeps us damp and chilled.

The crossing between the island and the mainland is perfect whale-watching territory. It’s not the season for whales, but a huge beluga with her baby came by to give us a show anyhow. The two of them gracefully pace our boat, rising majestically out of the water.

And finally back to Puerto Lopez after a fantastic day.

It’s not the destination, it’s the the journey

We wake early Saturday to catch a bus to Puerto Lopez for the long weekend (the new President has decreed a National Holiday, we’re not sure what it is in honor of).

We leave lots of time to find the bus terminal, buy a ticket, and find the right bus. We needn’t bothered, the terminal is tiny and the helpful ticket vendor walks us out to the bus by hand. We are 30 minutes early, and the bus leaves 15 minutes late. And strangely, we are the only passengers with tickets, everyone else simply pays cash to the conductor.

From the outside, this looks like a normal bus. But inside is a different matter. Excess baggage is stacked perilously at the front. Every seat is broken - Tom’s is fully reclined, in the only position it can hold, while the bottom cushion on mine isn’t attached and keeps trying to slide me off.

Puerto Lopez is about 100 kilometers from Manta and the cost is $3. Perhaps we didn’t take the right bus—ours took 4 hours to cover the distance. A great value—less than $1 an hour.

First, we spend 45 minutes circling Manta picking up more passengers. Because of the National Holiday, everyone is travelling. For extra value, we go around some blocks twice (I saw the same group of fruit stands and chickens for sale) while our driver rounds up a bus-and-a-half-full of passengers from various bus stops around the city. “Puerto Lopez, Puerto Lopez” he cries over and over again to attract even more passengers.

We assume they are bus stops, but it is Saturday and the markets in Manta are in full swing so it is hard to tell. Traffic is chaotic. And there is the usual amount of construction. Navigating a bus through these streets is a challenge.

Finally, we are underway. Unlike a packed commuter bus in Toronto, people are chatting away to each other in the aisles while a relentless stereo beats out Latin rhythms over the pounding diesel engine.

The Ruta del Sol varies from dry to tropical. Banana and coconut groves and ocean vistas alternate with six foot cactus and parched earth.

We are not in a hurry—a good thing considering we stop at the drop of a hat. We stop down a dirt road where the driver has to honk repeatedly to clear the pigs out of the way (chickens know to run for their lives when the bus comes by). We stop to fill up at a gas station ($12.36). We stop to pick up a fresh coconut (with a straw) for a passenger who slipped the conductor a dollar to run out for him at one of the whistle stops.

When we finally stop in Puerto Lopez, the trip gets interesting. Puerto Lopez is a tiny beach town, with a busy market today. But the day which started nicely is now overcast and drizzling.

Our resort, the Anandaluz, is 12 km further on. So we can take another bus (even after six weeks of mellowing travel, we aren’t relaxed enough for that), or we can take a cab. However, it seems that in this part of the country, taxis come with only three wheels.

Tom finds us a nice one and the next thing you know we go racing off on the wet, muddy roads. The only thing more terrifying than going up a steep hill (passing everything the taxi can with its mighty two cylinders), is racing downhill.

A truck passes us in the drizzle, throwing up a fine spray of mud from the dirt road that coats our faces and glasses. We weave our way between potholes big enough to swallow us.

I remember feeling sorry for people sitting exposed to the elements in the backs of pick-up trucks. Well no more. That is a luxury ride compared to a tuk-tuk. You have something structural to hold onto in the back of a truck.

The taxi driver flattens himself down against the handlebars, out of the wind, but turns around regularly to see that we are still with him. Thrills, chills and hills—the trifecta for only $5.

When Michelle and I find ourselves in a really, really out-of-the-way place, in some crazy situation that our wildest dreams couldn’t have imagined, one  of us will turn to the other and say ‘Where the hell are Tom and Michelle?’.   We did that on this ride.

We land in our tropical paradise. Tom checks us in, while I check to make sure all body parts are accounted for, and pick the bugs out of my teeth.

The Anandaluz hotel is lovely. The staff are warm and helpful. The food is superb.  The pool is inviting, and the beach is spectacular. Unfortunately, the weather is cold, overcast, and wet. It has something to do with the ‘El Nino’ and ‘El Nina’ phenomena, caused by hot and cold currents mixing off the shores of Ecuador in different ways – this is apparently an ‘El Nina’ year, with record amounts of precipitation.