United Kingdom: Here I Come!

So, with a mere two hours before I step on the plane, I'm writing, keeping in spirit this blog as a travel diary, I'm off, to the United Kingdom, again... this will be the 4th time I've been there in my lifetime. Mostly, I'm going because almost all of my extended family lives in England, but I'm hoping, being much older and not the same person that had gone there years before, that this will be a much more enlightening experience than previous excursions. I'll largely be staying in the London area, so I'm hoping to get a good time share in what I think is one of the greatest cities on earth. I'm also expecting to take trips up to northern england, wales, and maybe a short trip to France and/or Spain.

Right now, I'm being plagued with customary butterflies in the few hours before I leave, which is odd, because I've got 9 hours of plane travel ahead of me, and I've learned to hate plane travel, especially the Vanouver->Heathrow flight, which I have to sit there for 8 straight hours in a seat I can never get quite comfortable in. In total I'll be leaving Penticton on an hour flight to Van, then a 2 hour layover, then 8 hours on to Heathrow, the main airport in London. From there, I have no idea... but I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

My Day on Isla Del La Plata

The Ecuador Diaries: Part 7

So, I got home, at which point my mom totally mollycoddled me for the next while and I was not allowed out of the house. While it was great to have poeople come over keep my company, I got really spastic sitting around the house, listening to every CD I brought with me, and trying to expend energy. On the next day (Monday), I was let out in the evening to go around the village for a while and hang out with people. The next day I'm fine, and get to do the only real shift at schoolbuilding I would do on this trip. Tuesday, I needed a break from Spanish and fish and rice, and went to get some pizza from this place on the beach. Our parents, knowing we were leaving soon, took us to this incredible church right on the edge of this really tall cliff, one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. The next few days were a bit of a blur. Our parents also had a party for us and David, whose birthday it was, although he admited, aftering breaking a plate, and Aurelio's motorcycle, he wasn't having a good day, the party went on with cake and music and dancing. We also gave our families the gifts we brought with us. That green St. Paddy's day hat I had, I gave to David, and a hacky sack to Fernando, a bunch of other things I can't remember. Those would've had to have been the best days we'd had there. Jeff and I got sick that night, from what we can guess was the calamari, and came and took pictures for the last day of work. Somehow, the time past till we needed to go home, and get on the bus to go. With a lot of tears and hugs, we were off. We took the bus to Manta, up the coast (they have a joint US air base there) and took a flight to Quito. It is so incredible here. With big mountains, no humidity (AWESOME!) and cool weather, it felt much more like home. After finding our way to our hostel, I called home again, and visited a bank, the only one I've ever seen that has a guard that openly carries a shotgun. The next day, we went to the big market in Quito, where I got a lot of things I've given people since I came home, on our way back, it began to rain, and I mean RAIN! It would take 2 hours in the rain in Canada to get me as wet as Quito got me in 2 MINUTES! We made it back, much more soaked, some of the stuff took forever to dry, but the thing was, the rain only lasted 20 minutes, and we, the bunch of silly gringos that we were, thought it was a good idea to walk in it. After a hot shower (a HOT shower!) we packed up to leave on the plane home the next day. We then got on a bus to visit the guy who'd been running this program we were doing. He lived in the best house we'd seen in two weeks, and we got to eat western food and talk about what we'd just experienced.

At 4 am, we had to wake up to get to the airport, which was totally brutal, and most of us slept through the whole affair. And so, we leave, flying out over the Andes. We had to wait in Houston for 6 hours, but now, it didn't seem so bad, the time past, I still don't like the place though. Back to Vancouver, and home. God, that was totally incredible! This is Andrew, signing off...

The Ecuador Diaries: Part 6

This morning, (Sunday) I got up and felt a bit sick, but in a crucial moment of stupidity, overlooked it. We got a bus again to Puerto Lopez to get a boat to Isla Del La Plata (Isle of Silver, found out later it was the location of Francis Drake's hideout and the secret dock of the Golden Hind). We were told it was something like the "poor man's Galapagos". On the way, to our delight, we meet a pod of dolphins that jumped and swam around the boats. We get to Isla Del La Plata, I found I have to take Gravol for the first time in my life to keep my stomach down. In hindsight, I should not have gone but I went on a hike circuit around the east side of the island, got a little less than halfway before I needed to stop and huck up my breakfast (grossed out Kaila too) and then went back. The only real thing I got out was pictures of various boobys (and I do mean the birds) and an understanding of how the other six that were sick before me felt. Later I found out that of the 22 of us that went, only six managed to complete the hike they went on. Back on the boat, at least I don't have the urge to hurl anymore. There was a cruise ship in the harbour, apparently foll of Germans, of all things. We went around the island with tropical fish, those feeling well (I am not one) go snorkelling but I do get a good look at some the fish over the side of the boat.

The Ecuador Diaries: Part 5

It's Saturday, we got up early to get a bus to Los Frailes, a famed beach about an hour northeast of Las Tunas. The sand there was really soft but at the expense of being fine and "sticky." (There is still some in the grooves of my sandals) It gets in everywhere and never totally cleans off. It was uber peaceful and soothing, dozing off in the sun, listening to the ocean, feeling the water lap around my ankles. With the past week being far more eventful than most of us were prepared for, this a fucking awesome stress reliever. After Los Frailes we go to Agua Blanca (although there was no "white water" anywhere), an archeological site showing the some three millenia that people having been living in this region. We had a guide take us on a round trip to various sites that had been the foundations of temples and other buildings. On the way home, we stopped in Puerto Lopez and I went to a phone/internet place and called home, my folks weren't home, so I talked to my brother, then called Dani, which I'd promised to do while I was here. After hearing from Canada, I have begin to realize how much I miss home...

Fernando and Robertson

The Ecuador Diaries: Part 4

The week went by like this, we get up, shower, dressed and out the door, and bum a ride to San Telmo. We finished moving the dirt and have been moving irrigation hoses around the fields which have a wide variety of veggies and fruit including bananas, coffee, squash, beans, aloe, pineapple, limes, tangerines, oranges, green peppers and these little fruits I forget the name of that are good for hangovers. There are also three MASSIVE pigs, a doberman-X called Negro (of all the things you could call your dog, it had to be "black"), and rooster which I have a vendetta against. The farm has very little shade and its been kinda brutal working out here, but we have short hours, so its all good. The fruit all seems to taste better right after picking it off the tree/bush. After work we'd go chill at the ice cream stall where Hannah works. After lunch we gather up and go work at the school for about two hours. We then go the beach with Fernando and David. After dinner we go up to the field on the west side of Las Tunas and watch soccer. On Wednesday the game was disrupted because a snake was too close to one of the goals and they never finished the game. By this point about half a dozen of us are sick, me included, with what we have determined to be because we are getting used the climate On Friday we said goodbye to Felix and at three we got on the truck and gathered everyone from Las Tunas and Puerto Rico to meet at the main hostel, but, on our way after Puerto Rico, Chloe fainted, causing her mom to break down, and the rest of the day seemed much more stressful because of it, already so many of us were sick and Choe showed just how much it was taking out of us to e here. Didn't sleep well that night.

At this point I am beginning to fully comprehend how everyone is getting something different out of this experience. Most people, while being happy to be here, at the same time, they couldn't do this for long, in sharp contrast to my chosen career path of doing this for a living. Last night there was also a group of people our own age who I recognized as either surfer crowd or city kids, they had a fire going and some of us were actually offered drugs and Tequila (ummm... yeah). I am also beginning to understand the impact of globalization, here in the Global South, seeing the young people here readily taking up my own homogenous Western lifestyle and casting aside their own culture and the strength of their community to pave the war for "sex, drugs and rock n'roll" and accompanying corporate control. Being able to find Coke everywhere is another sign and the kids with designer clothing. It makes me feel, so sad. Not just because they're losing their own cultural identity, but also because I really never have had my own unique culture to belong to myself, seeing as I belong to the wave of the Western world. I've known it all my life and nothing else.