Pent House in Bahia

I have just continued living the rough life since the Galapagos.

In celebration of my friend Akuls´ birthday, the presence of my super star friend Jason and in order to ´work´ on the environmental education manual Jeremy and I have been working on, i just spent the last week on the beach and in the pent house, yes PH, of a sick apartment building in Bahia. Bahia means bay and sits nicely on a pretty bay and is known for being a mini-miami and/or a Eco-city. I don´t really care what it is known for because now, it is known to all of us as the PH city.


Here are a few pictures just to show how hard life has been lately. Two weeks in the Galapagos (pics to come) and a nice vacation in Canoa and the PH. I continue to be amazed by the friends I have and the experiences I get to share with them. Lots of good peole, lots of good times. The word good can´t ever be over-used in my mind.





So many good people...

We are so tan and popular... on one of the 4 PH balconies

The rough life... ouch, it hurts, life is so hard...

I mean, he just looks so cool in that picture... Life on the beach, human pillow... nice

We are tan, we are popular and we drink beer...

UMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM...

Posing by the Washington monument....

Pent House Style

Now, I am back to Tabuga for a community party celebration for the school and a hard week of work and getting the Environmental Center up and ready!

Back to sweat, tears and blood. Goodbye PH.

Sick and still smiling

Wow!

Thank goodness for my male nurse. AJ saved me on our long journey leaving the Galapagos. Our last night after a day of seeing sharks, snorkeling with sea turtles, walking in a lava tunnel and much, much more I got really really sick. My fever passed a hundred as did the number of trips I took to the bathroom.

But! I smiled the whole time. After seeing everything I had seen and traveling around with a good friend life was just too good.... even with a bacterial food infection and amoebas. So as we went from boat to taxi to bus to ferry to plan to taxi to Quito to bus overnight to Tabuga. As we went I slept on benches, floors, AJ and any other surface available. I was so weak, I was the weak duck. The smiling weak Duck.

Luckily, I can be a tough cookie and took Tae Kwon Do when I was little so I used my mind over body skills and quickly was back to my spunky self.

AJ and I went to my reserve, attempted at teaching English in the highschool but the doors were locked and no one had a key. We hung out with my counterpart, Joe from the Ceiba Foundation and hung out with my Peace Corps friends in Canoa. Canoa is the surf town Alex (my brother) used to live in. Actually, Alex´s old apartment is now a sick bar and his old room a storage room and bathroom to the bar. It was crazy and Elliot, Trinity, Fitzy, AJ and I drank beers at Alex´s old room now bar in honor of my little brother.

From Canoa I had to send poor AJ with his loneself back to Quito because I had a big meeting. So with a single tear in my eye I waved goodbye to Primo AJ and there closed the adventures of A - squared. It was an incredible trip and words can´t express how beautiful it was. Pictures will help. AJ... get on that already... we want the pictures! I will post the link ASAP.

After my meetings I returned to Canoa where I dominated happy hour and beach life with my PC friends. Now I am working on an environmental education manual in Bahia. Bahia means bay and we happen to be staying at the Pent House apartment of this incredible apartment building in Bahia, overlooking the bay. And environmental education manual seems to mean rum and cokes and carrot cake.

Happy Birthday AKUL!

And so I leave you to go drink a cocktail on one of the four balconies of the Pent House time share apartment. And I leave you with these words:

Be good people, love good people and good will be.

Life is rough ey?
Peace, Love and Friends,

Andreita... (wants a margarita!)

Andrea Veers In And Out of Commission

Hey guys -- Andrea's too feverish to type up a blogpost before we head off to Tabuga, so I'll just copy and paste the email I just sent my friends-and-fam list. Don't worry, I'm taking good care of her...


Hola -- que tal amigitos? Soy kicking ass and taking names as per my usual! You find me now back in Quito, for a short while, before embarking on a overnight 6-hour bus ride to Andreitas village of Tabuga. The ride promises to suck, a lot, but from everything I've been hearing about Tabuga for the past year and a half it'll be worth it. Unfortunately I happen to know a lil something about sucky travel today, as we grouped up at 5:30am to take a 4 hour boatride back to the island that has an airport. I actually wasn't hungover, but due to taxi difficulties to the pier, we were the last ones on the boat and got stuck up at the front where it's choppiest. We're not talking a big boat here, far from it, there were about 12 passengers and believe me when I say I got to see 8 of the 12 puke heartily in front of me for the next 4 hours. I was allright for the first half hour or so, but the boat got really hot and stuffy up front, so I'm starting to sweat as well as have my stomach turn from everybody puking in bags, so I was about to pop but we got 'em to open up a flap on the back to let some air in, I moved back there and made it through without chunks blown. You think that's bad though -- at least I'm healthy! Andrea came down with a fever and all sorts of bad things last night and spent all night dealing with that, and she's been like a zombie all day today on all of our travel back to Quito. I'm just glad I've been here to force feed her bread and water and dehydration pills and whatnot, but she's checking up with the Peace Corps nurses right now to see if she caught Dengue Fever, which would probably screw up the rest of our trip... She's been a trooper tho, so hopefully not.

Good news from our day of travel (from 5:30am to now I've been on taxi, boat, watertaxi, truck, ferry, bus, plane, and taxi) -- we called American Airlines and they found my bag, so the donated clothing will go where it is needed, so that's a weight off my back. Tight.

To catch ya up on yesterday -- we rolled out dece early again on a tour in the back of a pickup truck to a couple different spots down a road on Isla Isabella. First up was the 'Wall of Tears', which was completely idiotic. Back in the fourties after WWII, some Ecuadorian politico got the bright idea to send a ishload of prisoners out to the Galapagos for no apparent reason. There were a bunch of prisoners, and not many police, so the police guards responded by inventing a task sure to kill a bunch of them -- by building their own prison lavarock by lavarock. Dumb. Anyways, they only got one wall done before the prisoners revolted, tied the guards to trees, took their weapons and shanghied a ship off of the island, but not before a whole bunch of them died. So, saw that. That was that. Second up was a pretty sweet lava tunnel that we were able to climb down into, that went all the way to the ocean (although we didn't wade that far). Thirdly, and really the one I'd been waiting for all along, was a visit to the Galapagos Turtle Breeding Center, where they collected all the different types of turtles (each island evolved its own subspecies) and breed them, take care of them until they are old enough to survive all the sweet predators we've introduced to the islands, and then put them back in the wild. Turtles are tight! And big! And slow! And completely unnecessary! I mean seriously -- what's the purpose there?

Lastly we jumped on a boat and headed out to a nice snorkling spot not far away from our hostel. On a little pre-snorkle walk we found a bunch of black lizards, literally hundreds on sitting on the rocks next to the path. Then we checked out a shark resting area (weird -- how do they know to come there to rest?) which was dope, and then out to snorkle. Not as much life there as Hawaii, but still very good snorkling, and I found and followed two sea turtles (and got Andrea over to see the second one) so that's always tight

Got back, had another great fish dinner, this time up was swordfish, deeeelish. Headed out to a bar for some more drinks and dancing, which is right around the time Andrea figured out she had a bad fever and felt generally like warmed over sheeeeit, so we called it an early one to allow her to thrash around the hostel for the next 10 hours or so. I feel really bad for her, but she's doing a lot better now and has got some antibiotics, so hopefully we're good from here on out.

Shit! I gotta wrap this up so that I can get some pics of the sunset over Quito. We're headed off to Tabuga tonight as I said, so hopefully I'll be able to hitchhike to one of the bigger towns nearby Tabuga to send one last missive before I fly back to Denver. Adios muchachos!!

AJ

(with Andreita looking on)

Adventures of A - squared

¨How cool is it when you go somewhere that you know has cool things and you find more cool things that you didn´t even know about?¨

Let me tell you... very very cool.

I have become very profound with my amazement with the Galapagos. Happiness is pouring out of my nose and ears. Want to know why?

Yesterday we left Isla San Cristobol after a wonderful night of dancing at an Ecuadorian discoteca. AJ got his first taste of being the only white person somewhere and forever will remain the ¨most attractive guy that I have ever seen¨according to overly excited Ecuadorian girls who swooned over the baby blues. AJ even danced with them one after another and afterwards they thanked me for sharing my cousin. AJ and I tell peeps we are cousins because it´s a lot easier than explaining that in our culture it´s normal to have friends of the opposite sex. I think my family would totally adopt him as a cousin so AJ Crosby (weird those are my initials) is in, especially considering he is the most attractive guy in the world, we only like pretty people.

From Cristobol, still tipsy from the shots that our Ecuadorian island buddies were feeding us, we took a boat to Isla Santa Cruz. We had the morning to explore the island before heading to Isla Isabela and this is where cool things that we didn´t even know existed appeared. First we went to what the Lonely Planet guide book describes as one of the most beautiful beaches on the Galapagos. We took the long walk away from town through a forest of cactus trees. Literally these trees were incredible having normal trunks and instead of leaves, cacti. We were a little skeptical because the walk took awhile but when we arrived it was all worth it. The white soft sand beach was georgeous and instead of regular rocks they were lava rocks. AJ and I have decided were really super tourists because we tend to explore more than the average tourists. It definitely payed off when we wandered into three huge iguanas (picture will be posted someday), a bunch of cool crabs and lots of cool lizards. On the walk back we happened to wander down a little bath to a salt water lake. Even with AJs sick camera the photos don´t do it justice. The water was an incredible green and so refreshing. A great little bonus cool thing in a world of cool things.

From Santa Cruz AJ and I hopped on a small boat for a 2 hour ride to Isla Isabela. It´s the biggest of the islands and was recommended because it has great variety. On the boat I was worried that a little girl was going to have a heart attack. I realize it´s not common for 4 year olds but the amount of fear radianting from this girl was intense, she screamed ¨Please stop the boat sir¨ for about twenty minutes, tears rolling down her face and a piece of chocolate, meant to distract her, melted in her knuckle whitening clentched fist.

Now, on Isabela life continues to suprise me. We´ve seen some really amazing stuff but after hiking today I am burnt out and need a power nap before dinner and another night of dancing with AJ and whatever Ecuadorians are drawn to us. Being with the most attractive guy in the world happens to draw people in. If only I had some sweet baby blues...

Peace, love and the Galapagos!

AJs Emails...

Why shouldn´t I overload my blog after months of my family and friends wondering if I am alive. AJ writes well... and obvs has a different perspective on things so here are his remarks:

August 13

Hey folks, as most of you know, I'm off to Ecuador tomorrow for another 10-day-jaunt in a Third World country. I don't expect to have nearly the internet access on this trip as I did in Egypt, but I'll do my best to keep you informed and up-to-date on my experiences and plans while I'm there.

I'm not nearly as nervous heading into this trip as I was for Egypt, mainly because I have a lot of faith in my Espanol from the 4 years I took in high school. Hey, compared to my knowledge of Arabic, even know how to conjugate a verb is a huge step up, even if I don't remember what the verb means. And Spanish uses the regular alphabet instead of weird scrawls and dots! Woot woot! Anyway -- my plan so far is to fly to Quito tomorrow without any delays or problems, meet Andrea in Quito (she apparently has a US Embassy pass and can go back and forth thru Customs so she'll be able to find me pretty easily), spend the night in a hostel in Quito and then jump on a small plane to the Galapagos.

We're going to play it by ear in the Galapagos -- we may go the low-cost backpacker route, or may jump on a 2-3 day cruise if we can find one at a discount. Regardless, I expect to see lots of flaura and fauna that looks effing ridiculous. If I don't see a giant tortoise poop out an egg in front of me, I'll probably view the trip as a dissapointment.

After 4-5 days in the Galapagos, we're flying back to Quito and catching the 11pm bus to Andrea's village, Tabuga, which is like a 6-7 hour drive. Sounds good to me as I'll be with my native guide, but it was funny to read some literature that said: "When in Ecuador -- try not to travel by night, especially by bus, which can be robbed by bandits". Banditos! Muy bien! Hopefully Andrea's Embassy pass covers them as well. But yeah -- we'll get to Tabuga, which may be a pain even without bandits as I'll be hauling a duffel bag or two of a bunch of donated clothes I got together from folks at my office for the Tabugans. It sounds like we'll spend a day or two in the village, seeing what Andrea's life is all about, and then head to a beach village an hour south to hang/party with some of her Peace Corps peeps for a day, and then catch a ride from a visiting professor back to Quito and make it back to the states bedraggled and Latinized.

So anyhoo that's the plan. I'm sure it will go through many mutations, or as we in Ecuador, "muchos El Ninos". But it should be a heck of a time, I'm really looking forward to it, and hopefully I'll be able to keep you guys semi-in-the-loop. Take care of yourselves and I'll do the same!

Alejandro de el Johnson

PS -- If ya'll want to read a bit more about my friend Andrea, here's her (rarely updated but pretty funny) blog: http://tabuga.blogspot.com/. Enjoy!

August 14th
Hola friends, coworkers, family and framily all! This morning finds yours truly in downtown Quito, after what could be called a truly restful nights´ sleep, but certainly wouldn´t be called that in any other place. For one, I was delayed three hours by lightning in Miami, and you know what´s awesome about that: nothing! So got in a lot later, not that Andrea noticed ´cause that´s just not something she notices, which is tight. We went directly to our hostel in Gringoville -- no shit, that´s what our area in Quito is called -- checked, grabbed some pantalones (hace un poco frio) and I took her out to an extremely expensive Ecuadorian meal which I think ran me $30 all told. It. Was. Frickin. Bueno! SO I got all filled with flank steak, plantains, rice and beans there, and then went to a dive bar she knew that specialized in cheap cervezas, cheap hookas and cheaper weirdos. We didn´t try the weirdos, but they tried us with their eyes, and the hookah and beers went down like gravity says they should. We chatted and caught up like old people do, got mildly twisted, and ritered to our hostel muy excelente for the night. And here we are, a mere 4hrs later, pumping out email, updating blogs and about to go to the airport for our Galapagos adventure. Impressions? Quito is just like a shitty city in America -- we´ll say somewhere in Jersey -- but this comes from an hombre that´s only hung out in Gringolandia. So, take what I say so far with a large helping of salt. Anyhoo, my perceptions are sure to change drastically as soon as I´m sleeping on Andrea´s floor with the cock-a-roaches.Oh, and American lost my luggage, which had all the donated clothing I was bringing to the po folks in Tabuga. Thanks American! Update on that as it comes in.Until next time, I´d advise you not to travel to Georgia in the next week or so. Them Russkies are muy muy crazy, and not in a good way.

Alejandro

August 16th
HOLA amigos! I am in the Galapogos now, internet on the islands, who knew? It´s evolved totally different here though, the keyboards are on the walls and you have to pedal to make it run. Whoops, bad evolution joke, that´ll happen. Anyhoo, we hopped on a flight yesterday and made it out to Isla San Cristobal, the capital of the Galapagos, and where actual people actually live. It´s been great, definitely a bit different than most tourists start out. I´ve been hobbling around decently well on my bumb ankle, although we did have to go buy an ace bandage for it after I rolled it again when jumping rock to rock. Obvio. But other than that lameness on my part, it´s been bomb and filled with animals as expected. After we arrived and found a nice hostel for $10 per person, we took off on a jaunt that took us to the local center for conservation, which Andrea dug especially as she´s building one out in her neck of the jungle. Then on a rocky path with lots of lizards down to a beach with maaaad sea lions, just chilling on the beach and generally not giving a damn. Andrea went in and snorkelled with them then, I chilled and rested the ankle like the leathery old man that I am.

Then, made it back and found us a GREAT dinner of pizza at some cool place overlooking the bay, waited for the sun to go down unspectacularly due to clouds, and spent the night barhopping and making some new friends, some Americans and also a funny English woman and Aussie dude. There may have been dancing on a pole by yours truly. God I hope not.

Woke up this morning not feeling hot, but hot enough that we were able to scramble out of our beds to find a nice lil brekkie, and make it to our boat at 9am for a tour around San Isobel. We were out on the water from 9am till 2pm, during which time we did awesome shit like, say, boat out to a huge rock in the ocean that had ishloads of animals hanging on it, and then snorkle through a strait that split the rock, and we saw lots of colorful fish, barnacles, etc. Oh and also probably 15 sharks about 5 ft in length, tight, and 8 Manta Rays that were pretty damn amazing and looked like a screensaver as they travelled in a pack below us. Aint so shabby, this lil life of mine. I´m gonna let it shiiiine. We then had a walk around a beach covered in blue footed boobies and mangroves, and found a massive heron (don´t worry got great pics). Then it was off to a place where our captain new there was young sea lions that loved to frolic, and frolic with young sea lions is what happened. They were a hoot, jumping all around the boat and generally acting like puppies.

When we got back to land, we were mad tired, but that didn´t stop us from slapping each other to wake up and jumping in a cab to go visit this freshwater lake that is in a caldera in the middle of our island. In five minutes, we went from a tropical, beach atmosphere to chilly, misty greenness, and it only got more so as we went up. We got to the caldera and had to walk the last half mile up a hill of mud, and up some steps, and we couldn´t even see the caldera when we were on the rim due to the mist and fog. One muddy, slippery walk down later, and we were all up on the lake. It was extremely surreal, especially as Andrea took off her shoes and clambered down like Jungle Jane and ended up wading into the lake like a crazy person. Very, very cool.

We were wiped after that illogical trip, so we went back and got a loooooong siesta, so we just woke up and I dragged her to an internet cafe as I´m teaching her to be a better blogger and emailer. So, check out her blog for competing descriptions of our days, she´s actually updating it! I have effected change in my world! Tight! Baby steps.

OK peoples -- until next time be good and I´ll talk to ya soon.

A to the Jizzle (gross - Andrea)

First time snorkeling... not too shabby.

8 Sting Rays
bunch of sharks
sea lions
and crazy colorful marine life


Not too bad for a virgin snorkeler! Today AJ and I spent the whole morning into the afternoon on a little boat traveling around to little islands around Isla San Cristobol. It was incredible! We saw out first blue-footed boobies, a sea lion kissed my hand while showing off his sweet water skills and the snorkeling (cherry officially popped) in crystal blue water in a cove of a massive rock shooting out from the middle of the ocean was remarkable. Yes, worth remarking about Alex Crosby... so here, I remark:

Imagine a big flock of geese. Now instead of being geese have them be sting rays with about a 4 foot wing span. A smooth black color with bright white poka dots and tails that look like a samari sword. Instead of being below look up, you are above and they are all swimming in unison, the flying V underwater. The gracefulness absolute beauty, the stingers absolute fear. AJ counted 8. A breath taking moment which is unfortunate while snorkeling because a lot of water got in my mask and up my nose.

Now imagine a shark. Not a big shark, not, according to the guidebooks, a man eating shark but, a shark none the less. Imagine that shark being curious about the blonde girl (the sun has turned me quasi-platinum) staring at it. Imagine blonde girl freaking out and swallowing water and being way too excited about the shark that she almost missied the sea lion circling her. Blonde girl happy.

Then there are the baby sea lions. AJs picture are going to give them more justice then any of my words but they were amazing. Like little puppies jumping for attention and playful loving embraces. They are so agile in the water and being able to touch them and stuff was spectauclar.

In the afternoon AJ and I decided that it´s cool to go from snorkeling in the middle of the pacific with clear blue water and tropical sun to rainy cold muddiness. This change was in the form of a caldera that is situated about 20 km away from the coast up to about 700m. The drive up from the coast was like going from the tropics to jungle to the mountains all in one fast swoop. In an effort to show off my new barefooted jungle skills, learned from time in the rainforest, I got muddy and wet climbing down and actually going and almost falling into the lake. It was like we magically arrived in Tarabithia, a surreal (thanks AJ) misty world, worlds apart from the earlier part of the day´s reality.


Today I realized just how rough my life is. Our trip hasn´t even ¨really started¨and already I am fullfilled and seriously amazed that there is more to come.

This internet training session is coming to a close.


Pictures and words from AJ to come. Did I mention he has a sick camera and is really into photography? Being assitant to AJ is really adding to the absolutely difficulty of my Galapagos experience. Breathtaking pictures and all I have to do is hold onto the camera bag. Rough, really rough.

Awful Blogger but hey I am going to the Galapagos!

Hello to All!

I know I have been awful about about blogging and I promise everyone to write some good updates from the past few months. A lot has gone on from shocking stories about my students participating in beastiality, a visit to the US of A and lots of awesome work stuff.

But for now, I am going to keep you all on your toes about the bestiality and plans for my future and focus on the moment:

At this very moment I am practicing which is going to be an intensive course on being better on updating my family, friends and fans. I am in Quito with Alex Johnson (going to go for AJ in the blog so we don´t all think Alex Crosby has returned to Ecualand). For those of you who don´t know him he is a good friend from Duke and post-college life in Colorado and he happens to be an incredible blogger and email updater. AJ arrived last night and we immediately hit up Gringolandia and AJ splurged on a $40 meal. I did say splurged and it felt like it to me but for all of you AMERICANs $40 doesn´t even get you a bottle of water these days. We spent the night on the town catching up on over a year and a half of life which now back together again feels like just yesterday.

But no, yesterday I spent the day frantically running around Quito trying to get some last minute deals on Galapagos tours. As it turns out I dominated the last minute deals and AJ and I have a full and eventfull week ahead. And, because my personal trainer on blogging is with me you will all actually here about it!

Today the adventures start. AJ and I are flying to the Isla San Cristobal. We get to spend two days there guideless and open-minded before we take a boat across the open sea to Isla Santa Cruz.

Galapagos, soon to be daddy George and a dream come true just a few hours away!

You´ll be hearing from me soon!