2nd South American Email - 23/04/05

yip... those were the days (09.04.05 - 21.04.05)

buenos dias from banos in ecuador

well exciting times here at the mo... the tenth insight found us in an arbitary second hand bookstore somewhere in the middle of ecuador... coincidence?... i think not.

otherwise we have had riots, protests, a military coup, grounded aircraft and closed borders... and that´s just in the last few days. as some of you may know... the ecuadorian president was ousted on wednesday after escalating civil unrest and had to go into excile in brazil after the military refused to protect him any longer.

we were actually caught up in one of the first riots early last week when we were quito and witnessed rock weilding civilians take on the police - who responded with tear gas and trungeon beating (we saw one kid of about 15 getting beaten by about 3 policemen). we were out shopping for a panama hat in the local market minding our own buisness, when all hell broke loose... all of a sudden people started running for their lives... traders closed shops... iron barracades came down... and we had no clue what was happening... i´ve never seen the fearless stephen little squeal like a little girl... biggs got trapped inside the barracades and didn´t remerge for half an hour... steve never did get his panama hat.

so we went back to our dorm and took it easy for the rest of the evening... dispite our $5 rent included 12 litres of free communal rum and coke... weird... they just bring out this 12 litre bucket and everyone dips in their cups and gets hammered... unfortunately we couldn´t push ourselves to take part in the festivities. just one further fact that i should mention that may someday be used in a learning... our dorm included the 3 of us and a danish girl.

anyway the reason we couldn´t take part was due to the fact that we didn´t sleep the night before... lets flash back to ba shall we?

the birthplace of the legendary revolutionary ernesto ´che´ guevara consists of buildings and architecture, plazas, cobbled stone backstreets and squares (where model photo-shoots often take place), and hippy markets that remind you of a modern-day latin european city, but underneath this, there is a sinister culture of steak, beer, tango and glitzy night life that threaten to blow away this facade... and entice any would-be tourist over to the dark side of drugs, sex, and rock & roll.

although our intentions were good... we were soon embroiled in the shadowy side of ba... only we couldn´t find the drugs, sex and rock & roll... we therefore turned to steak, beer and sleepless nights... the rest is a bit hazy... steve´s birthday was more like steve´s birthdays... as one day rolled into another amongst a crescendo of awesome steak, cheap beer and a few bottles of vodka. steve met his maker... a 45yr old slimey italian guy with a poneytail who uses the exact same pick up line as him... steve was indeed stoked... he just can´t figure out why he hasn´t managed to pick up anything decent on this trip yet... go figure!

so after 2 nights of not sleeping we rolled out into a cab for the airport at 4.30 in the morning... not much of the flight can be remember other than whilst somewhat annoyed that we hadn´t taken off yet, i asked the air-hostess when we would be taking off, only to find out we were already in the air.

we arrived at quito (ecuadorian capital) around lunch time... and for some reason booked a flight to galapagos for the next morning. for details of quito please refer to para 3 above.

so... on to galapagos and the "greatest wildlife show on earth"... yeah right... there were no blood-sucking insects, no ferocious human-munching mammals, no 45 metre sharks that launch themselves onto your boat and consume every passanger on board, bar the dude with the wooden leg who manages to get it wedged in the sharks mouth and then beats the beast to death with a hard-cover copy of kelly slater´s pipe dreams. in truth, if you come from africa, it´s pretty tame... the snorkeling is awesome though.

this is the island where charles darwin came up with his theory of evolution... but the only question in the evolutionary cycle that needs answering is how the powers that be managed to conspire fate to bring together 8 single danish birds at the same time to the bar we were at on monday night on a previously uninhabited island in the middle of the pacific ocean... this surely was the pinicle of evolution.

i am also proud to say that a learning i made sometime last year concerning the name "dave" held true - i think the learning went like this - no matter where you are in the world, no matter in what religion, race, or community, in every social circle, there will always be a arbitary dodgy dude named "dave" hanging around somewhere - in fact, you may not even know he is there, but you def know that he is strange. anyway we were accompanied on our cruise boat with a canadian "dave" and a danish "dave". canadian "dave" was only 21 and had been picked up by the cops 4 times in his life already... and in the midst of drunken chill out session one night, managed to launch about 3 plastic chairs off the top of the boat into the coastal sea surrounding the most fanatically preserved animal sanctuary in the world. danish "dave" didn´t say much, but managed to drink himself silly almost every night and wake on the last morning of our tour in the bed of a 40yr old bald man with a ginger bokkie.

the last night on galapagos was pete´s bday... however, we were too knackered to celebrate properly and decided to dedicate the previous evening´s bash (the one with the danish girls) to him... we would never have been able to top that evening anyway... happy bday pete, hope you enjoyed it.


the flight back to quito was stopped short due to the closing of airports and therefore our journey took a new twist... decided to get off at guayaquil (ecuador´s largest city - it is quite impressive) and then bussed it to banos, which is a cool little town set below a huge volcano and in the valley of the surrounding foothills. a healthy rest period was needed... and that is what we did. the first day we did our first hike and achieved our first summit. the second day we spent cycling along the river in amongst the surrounding mountains... was awesome and reminded us what we were on this trip for.

on a individual front... i sense that both pete and steve have opened a little to the spiritual side of their being and that their personal evolutionary path has broadened as a result... as those of you who have read pete´s email will testify. even "simple guy" steve´s eyes have opened to the fact that perhaps there are no "coincidences" in life and he was genuinely astounded at how the tenth insight found us with no warning at all.

anyway hope you guys are enjoying life wherever you are and whatever you may be doing.

later
d

take these chances
place them in a box
until a quieter time
lights down
you up and died.