GoNomad.com

Hey Guys, check out GoNomad.com . Its a cool travel website that I found out about when I met one of their writers at the train cars up in Nederland. Hopefully you'll be able to see one of my articles about Canoa up there soon!

Cliffs, Caves, and Cameras

Canoa is a pretty small town but there are still some adventures to be had. I heard about a couple sea side caves to the north of town when I had just got here but my first attempt to get there was shut down by the large tide changes.

On Wednesday I met two cousins, Mari and Siri, from Norway whose birthdays are two days apart. After celebrating Siri’s birthday on Wednesday night we decided to make an attempt at the caves on Friday for Mari’s celebration. Our planning consisted of asking around for directions which were vague at best (go north, around a cove, over a cliff, and then down) and getting some people to guess at the tide charts Thursday night. That seemed sufficient to me.

Low tide was estimated around 9am so we met at 8 for breakfast at a local gringo hangout. After some food we started walking out of town along the beach. As we passed the last hostel a stray dog, whom we quickly dubbed Rufus, started following us. I don’t know why it got named Rufus since it was a girl but Siri and Mari liked it and I don’t think the dog would have responded better to a girl’s name so I let it go. The tide was low as we casually walked around the rock buttress that had stopped my progress the first time. We continued around the cove where Rufus was briefly chased by some other dogs and then stared up at a really steep hill. There was supposed to be a “trail” going up but the recent rain must have destroyed it because no such thing existed. We met some local travelling artisans also staring up at the hill wondering what to do and since no one had any better ideas I started picking my way along a drainage the ran across the hillside. The clay mud was sliding with every step we took and my flip flops were more detrimental than good so I took them off. The drainage led us to the left side of the hill where we had to scramble up a very steep face for 3 meters before it leveled out a tiny bit following a second drainage. My flip flops were completely worthless at this point so I left them and opted to climb barefoot. I’m not gonna lie, my fear of heights was kicking in but Siri and Rufus were charging up the mountain like rockstars so Mari and I had no choice but to follow. At the top of the drainage we had to boost Rufus up and over some exposed roots and tree limbs which were covered in termites she could continue the walk with us.

Next was a brief trek through the jungle. Fallen trees, vines, termites, biting ants, and spiders were only some of the fun to be had as we picked our way along the top of a flaky sand/clay cliff that dropped 45 meters into the ocean. I was reconsidering the benefits of leaving my sandals on the hillside as we found a horse trail. Mari was convinced the hoof prints were actually that of a large human-eating beast but luckily I was able to convince her otherwise and the journey continued. After a bit more time in the jungle we caught up with the two locals in a clearing overlooking the ocean, a large field we had to cross, and the caves we were searching for. We scrambled down another steep run off and walked across a field with mud squishing up between our toes. I felt a little silly as we watched the two locals go to the exact same place walking along a road instead of through waist high grass but at least it got us to the same place.

As soon as we got to the beach I hopped in the water, happy to wash all the bugs, seed pods, and spider webs off. We waded in a little deeper, picking our way around the rocks sporadically dispersed under the water, and then making our way into the cavern. Bats were sleeping about 7 meters above us, stirring if we talked too loud, with many more of their brethren further towards the back. To be honest there wasn’t much to see in the cave but it felt triumphant to have reached our destination.

Once we exited the first cave I decided to attempt a swim to the second one which was separated from us by about 30-40 meters. No one wanted to go with me so I set out alone, fighting the current and ducking under waves as they rolled in. It should be noted here that I am a terrible swimmer. About 75% of the way there I gave up and let myself get pulled back to the beach where we played with Rufus, attempted cartwheels, and climbed on some rocks before we started the hike back.

It was pretty much the same as the way there except for an extra steep part that Siri found as an alternative way down the cliff. Rufus followed us the whole way, Mari’s camera survived in one piece, and Siri and I even got our flip flops back.

In other news I was an extra in an Ecuadorian indy film. I was standing outside a gringo bar when some kids I had partied with during Carnival asked me if I wanted to drink free beer and get paid to be in a movie with the only catch being we would shoot until 3am. I’ll try anything twice so I agreed and we headed over to a loosely organized set. Around 6am we were finally released, given $7 and a sandwich and thanked for our time, sans (or “sin”) any free beer. Oh well, it was a new experience and in about a year you’ll be able to see my haggard mug in “Tenemos Que Hablar.” Check it out.

And finally, some pictures -

Siri, Rufus, and I starting the hike.

Climbing down off a lookout with the local artisans watching from below

Deep in the jungle we came across an elusive beast - the Smiling Siri. Not many pictures of this exist.

That little dot in the water on the left side of the picture is my head as I tried to swim to the cave.

Climbing on the rocks

Picking our way down the cliff on the way home. It was every bit as steep as it looks.

Terremoto en Japon

I thought I’d take some time to write some about what its like to live, work, and play in a sleepy coastal town in Ecuador. The culture, the economy, the infrastructure and little snippets of how life rolls along down here. But mother nature had other plans...

I was awoken this morning by a rapping on my door. Not a knock, but a rap, something that makes one bolt upright and wonder what’s going on even before getting pants on. One of the other tenants of the hostel told me in a slow southern draw that there had been a massive earthquake in Japan and the coastlines of Ecuador were being evacuated. I went down stairs and talked to a few people – some of the locals were leaving, some weren’t, same with the gringos. I opted to stay noting that there was a big cliff behind us that I hoped I could climb if things got sketchy, and internet so I could check how the wave was progressing.

I booted up my computer and started doing research. Its incredibly hard to find information on tsunamis in Ecuador - Ecuador doesn’t even have its own wave buoy. I did find out that the president had issued a state of emergency and evacuated all of the coastline. We started seeing policia roll towards town in their pickup trucks and motorcycles. The cleaning lady showed up and dismissed the threat of a tsunami on seemingly no evidence. I woke up the last tenants and told them in broken Spanish that there was an earthquake in Japan and a possible tsunami. They dismissed it too with the same logic as the cleaning lady. I packed up all my stuff so it could be thrown in the truck in short notice, and then I moved other people’s valuables from the first floor to a locked room on the second. The water was the first danger, but we heard looting was close behind if we left the property.

I got back on the computer and started talking to friends in California and looking for signs of how big the wave would be. At this point I remembered that all of my belongings in California are packed into my car which is parked 6 blocks from the ocean at about 10 feet of elevation. I became less concerned for my immediate well being and more so for my stuff stashed in San Diego. The time for the wave to hit southern California came and went with no major news coverage, and then a friend told me it was a non-event, so I was relieved my stuff was safe.

I did some normal work around the hostel until about 5:00 when I went into town to find out if I was supposed to work at the restaurant. Instead of walking along the beach like usual I decided to take the most rickety, thrashed bike I have ever ridden along the road. Both wheels are severely bent, the derailleurs are rusted in place, the brakes are old style U-brakes that don’t work, and one of the pedals is completely broken, but when I pushed down on the pedals it was transferred to forward momentum so guess that counts as a bike. When I got to town it was completely deserted. There were some kids kicking a ball around in the street, and a couple groups of adults gathered around a few TV sets, but for the most part the town was abandoned. I was passed by a police pick up truck, and then two more on a motorcycle. The “passenger” on the motorcycle was carrying an automatic AK style gun in case looting started. I rode along the beach and all the businesses were closed. The only place that had any movement was Hotel Bambu. There were about 10 locals hanging out watching CNN in Spanish so I ordered a beer and joined them, picking up what I could from the conversations. When the police drove by one of the employees quickly took my beer from the table and put it on the bench next to me. Apparently all businesses were ordered to be closed and selling a beer could get them in a lot of trouble.

After about an hour I rode back to the hostel. No where else in the world had gotten a major tsunami and we were feeling pretty good. We started cooking some dinner just as we got a phone call that the Galapagos were expecting a 6 meter wave in about half an hour. 6 meters is huge, and we were suddenly questioning if we should be staying. There’s a shell of a hotel on the cliff overlooking the town and we heard that most of the expats in town were up there having a party. I moved everything from the second floor to the third, put a jug of water and a case of beer in the back of our 1970’s Land Cruiser, threw some backpacks and our dinner in, and we drove up the 4x4 road to join them.

It was totally dark by this point so there wasn’t much to be seen even if a tsunami did hit but at least we were safe. We ate our dinner of kinda spaghetti sauce / kinda chili and talked to some people who were walking around. One of the locals had set up a TV in the back of their van and we were watching a blurry CNN cover the events of the day. The more I watched it the more I felt we were probably fine. The hotel had electricity so lights were on, and different families and groups of friends had claimed different rooms making it almost seem as if it was a functioning business. When I looked closer though I saw that each room was basically a concrete square resembling more of a jail cell then a hotel. There were no doors or windows anywhere, just the holes where they were supposed to go, and there were raw ends of rebar sticking out of the concrete everywhere. One family even had a roaring fire in their “room” for a bit of extra light and to keep the mosquitoes away.

We decided we were probably safe and drove back. I was feeling fine until I had to go to the kitchen on the ground floor to make my dinner. Something about the darkness, the proximity to the ocean, and knowing that a wall of water was “supposed” to be on it way really freaked me out. I would walk down, stir the pasta, and immediately return to the second floor. Walk down, stir it again, and back to the second floor. The whole time I was listening intently for the sound of a big wave, but it was high tide and the hostel is 200 feet from the water so every wave sounds big. I went upstairs to eat and continued listening for signs that water was coming. Before a tsunami hits it draws all the water out so any time I didn’t hear a wave crash for a long time I thought maybe a wave was coming, and any time I heard a crash I thought maybe it was the big one. It was completely ridiculous and I was just freaking myself out but news in Ecuador is not like it is in California. There’s no warning systems, there’s minimal communication between towns, there’s no merchant ships w/ radios or helicopters to monitor the seas, there’s no building codes so no one knows if the house is safe or not – its hard to convey but the lack of information made for a very tense and stressful situation.

Our night guard didn’t show up either which makes sense but apparently natural disasters, or at least the threat of one, is a time of robbing and looting. I finally went to sleep but I was having night mares of getting robbed, and of a tsunami hitting, and even of ghosts which was really weird. I couldn’t believe how stressed out I was about the situation considering last time there was a tsunami warning in California I didn’t change my day’s plans at all. Part of it was being in somewhere foreign and part of it was how little of a warning system Ecuador has, but those two things together made for a very light night of sleep.

The next morning I walked down to the beach and saw that at least one wave had made it an extra 5-6 meters inland than any I’ve seen in the past two weeks, but that doesn’t count as much. And then I had one of my best surf sessions ever.

Yo no quiero agua, yo quiero bebida!

I’m in Canoa now, enjoying the small, rural beach side town w/ a decent surf break and a community of ex-pats from around the world. The town is about 9 square blocks with a normal population of about 700 and one paved road running perpendicular to the beach. Most of the nicer hostels and many of the gringo owned businesses are on the beachfront street. Though it’s the main commercial street its not paved and honestly the packed sand seems to do just fine.

However, this weekend was Carnival, and even though Rio de Janeiro and some other cities get the majority of attention for this holiday all of South America goes completely mental for the event. Canoa was expected to see 40-50,000 people over the weekend all looking to dance and drink on minimal sleep. The following is a recount of my Sunday night.

It started out innocent enough. I went to the restaurant where I’m working to see if they were going to be open or not. Since we had lost power 9 times the night before and ended up cooking for a party of 16 by candlelight, they decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and didn’t open. I struck out to find the gringos figuring they’d be at one of a handful of places. I met up with Colm and Damien, two Irish lads, walking down the street who showed me where everyone was.

We sat in the front room of a hostel mixing half and half rum and cokes and introducing ourselves to everyone else. Our crew of about 15 represented Sweden, Canada, Norway, New Zealand, the States, Ireland, Germany, and Holland and conversations were going in different languages depending who was or wasn’t paying attention. The owner of the hostel was hesitant at first but eventually joined with our party while the rest of his family looked on with reservations. It quickly got too hot in the room and soon we all picked up chairs and moved the party out into the street facing the beach. There were people walking up and down, cars w/ sound systems worth more than the vehicle driving by, and two stages and three bars all trying to play their music louder than the rest. The car with the biggest sound system lit by blue LEDs parked across the street from us so we took turns walking over and making fools of ourselves trying to dance to reggaeton and salsa while screaming broken Spanish introductions over the noise. Pitbull owned the music scene this year with Bon Bon and Maltido Alcohol (where the title of this post came from), both of which seemed to be on repeat. When the rum was depleted we struck out looking for whatever was next.

We stopped at a bar next to the Surf Shack and somehow two Irish (Colm and Dave), the Kiwi (Jack), and myself got separated from the rest. As we were walking down the street to try to find them a double-decker party bus inched past us attempting to make it though the crowds of people in the streets. There was a dance party on top and that was all the reason me and Jack needed to scale the outside of a moving bus. Colm and Dave took a slightly more conventional route but managed to meet us on the roof shortly thereafter where our dance party was intermittently disturbed by low hanging power lines. Near the edge of town the driver announced he was going to Bahia, a town 40 minutes away, where we had no intentions of going. We quickly scrambled off the back of the bus (there was a ladder this time) and hopped down before the bus took off.

Walking back down the main street the Irish got separated. In an effort to find them Jack and I walked to their hostel where we found the couple they were traveling with had 1) passed out early, 2) left the door open, and 3) left shaving cream in plain sight. Either one of those, or maybe even two, would have been fine, but the trifecta didn’t work out well for them. As Damien convinced us to leave, 3 girls from Guayaquil walked up to the door and introduced themselves. They were staying in the same hostel and had to wake up their friend before we could go back out. I don’t know if every room in that hostel is small, poorly lit, and smells like 4 people have been partying constantly, or if that was just the case for the Irish and these girls, but either way we left there as soon as we could. The girls barely spoke any English but alcohol consumption had put me at that perfect equilibrium where confidence is boosted but ability isn’t diminished too much so I was speaking Spanish like a rockstar. We walked down the beach front road until we found an adequately loud street party and danced there. I left for the bathroom and as I returned I simultaneously ran into Jack and met two people who introduced themselves w/ their names followed by “estamos trans!” (Spanish for “we’re trans sexuals). I don’t understand why people introduce themselves with “Hi, I’m (name) and I am (whatever)” because that whatever is usually their job or sexuality. Neither of those are small talk topics, and in Spanish they’re way above my vocabulary.

So we left. We lost the girls we were dancing with and walked all the way south on the beach front road looking for the Swedes and the rest of the gringos. Finally deciding to turn back, we saw the car with the blue LEDs and huge system we had been dancing with at the beginning of the night pull up. Their trunk was open so we jumped in and they drove us all the way back to the center of town, music blasting, picking their way through the massive crowds.

At this point we grabbed some street food which Jack professed was the best he’d ever eaten in an effort to get me to stop being picky. I still don’t believe him, but it was ok for the moment. We walked all the way up the main street looking for our friends and all the way back down. It was pretty uneventful until one block away from giving up we found them down a side road. We ventured into an improvised building doubling as a dance club and danced there until it closed.

Back out in the street there were local teenage surf pros playing on a balance board consisting of a piece of plywood sitting on a piece of cement that had been formed in a 2 liter coke bottle. I was pretty good at this at the Fruita Fat Tire festival a few years back so I took another shot. I was at least more successful than Jack, who took a running start at it and nearly landed on his head. I was speaking Spanish with more confidence than I have for most of the trip and dancing and having a great time. I met 3 new Americans and hung out with them for a bit before deciding to call it a night.

The streets were still busy, the music was still bumping, but I was done so I made my way back. After a short walk I arrived home and checked the time, deciding 5am is a good time to fall asleep. This is Carnival - people keep that pace for 5 or 6 nights in a row. And the next morning people are on the beach at 7. I doubt it’s the same people as those we saw at 5 but it could be because music is going at least 22 hours a day if not 23, there’s food and street vendors everywhere, and it would almost make more sense to go to sleep on the beach than to try and find a hotel when a town that’s equipped for less than 1000 people is suddenly inundated with 40,000.