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)