8 Hours to burn online - but not much to show for it.

We bought a load of Internet time to use here in Montañita in the next 12 hours, so we´re trying to pound through it.... thus the frequent blogging.

Today we left town - which was nice. Jumping onto a bus south we traveled about 4 Km into a town that we´re not really sure what it´s called. It´s got a bust of Señior Bolivar and some signs about independence, perhaps I´ll note it when I find out what it´s called. After our bus hop we walked down to the beach to enjoy a vast stretch of sandy emptiness, save the sea life, little sand mollusk things and crabs. The sand mollusks were very interesting. I´m sure they´re a part of every oceanic environment, but this is the first time I´ve spend any number of minutes observing them. They have those little shells that we all know so well, the ones about the size of half your pinky finger nail? and they´ve got little arms that stick out like wings. They bury themselves into the sand and when the water recedes from the shore they open up the arms and catch all the yummy goodness of the sea - like grocery delivery, except no ice cream. After spotting one of these suckers in the sand we could look up and see them everywhere. Everywhere! They made up about 40 percent of the surface that we walked on. I almost felt bad, but then I didn´t. Jon and I then took a couple of subjects and placed them into a fanta bottle I had with me to conduct cultural experiments. First, are they social animals. The seemed to be indifferent. Second, are they active in just water. They were. Third, are they denser than sand. Again, affirmative. Fourth, do they react well to G-forces. They seemed to do okay, and in fact were more active than they were prior to experiencing the high force*. Fifth, would they succeed in a journey into the Earth´s orbit? This was one area where we believe we need to do more research as after their departure, weightlessness, and subsequent water landing and rescue, they were less active than before. However, we were unable to conclude whether or not it was due to the high stress environment or simply due to lack of sleep. Lastly, do they like to dance. After several dance sessions they creatures were, according to our team, healthy and happy. Following the trials the creatures were set back into the sea where they could resume their previous lives. We then moved onto land crabs, though we kept to observations exclusively.

Following beach time we walked through the small town to find a place for lunch and arrived at a small restaurant where we were greeted with a hand shake and told to go lay in the hammocks while they make our food. No sooner had we sat to relax we were delivered drinks, compliments of the house. I had a feeling this place was going to be good. The food came and went as did several more rounds of drinks that were wonderfully delicious, but the best part was the beautiful ocean breeze in the hammocks beneath the bamboo and palm leave palapas. I think we spent 3 hours there.

After lunch we caught a heavily congested bus back to Montañita where we saw our California friends, who promptly made fun of our daily adventures and then shortly after mocked our blog - I can only assume they were jealous of our manliness. Jon wrote a poem about the day and I encourage yáll to ask him to read it to you. As for me, I was the most relaxed I´ve been for quite some time. I want to build a palapa at my house in Tucson.

Phosphorescence and Weird Dreams

After dinner we enjoyed some beach time in the spirit of REM. I hadn´t been night swimming for quite some time and forgot how difficult it is to see the swell until you have a mouth full of water and you´re upside down. The killer part of it all was the presence of happy little bugs, or angry - I couldn´t tell. On my way out to the water I found a cool little glowing bug. I put it on my finger and watched it crawl all around all the while blinking away. Then once we got into the water it was like we were robots. In fact, I may still be of the belief that I´m a robot while under water. The little phosphorescence attached and glowed on your skin as you moved, it was quite the site. It´s amazing what characteristics animals develop, or are given to them by the almighty creator.. which ever way you think it should be.In earlier news I woke up after having some pretty odd and vivid dreams, quite unpleasant. I think it might be the drugs. I don´t know for sure, so I´m going to give them another week or until I wake up sweating. After I woke up this morning, we went to go take care of business with the balsa board and alas were hit with yet another road block on the journey to getting a board. I should let Jon tell the story from here.

Jon:

Hi kids. So I was all set to buy this board. 9´2¨, tri-fin (fcs and a 10-inch box), and balsa. BALSA! BALSA!!! I spent like three hours trying to hammer out the deal (en español mind you), and we had it all worked out.

But first let me tell you about this one time I went to Las Vegas right before I flew to Ecuador, and when I was in Vegas I spent $800, but didn´t realize it because the casinos got me so drunk that I start telling proverbs.

So today I went to the ATM to get the money so that I could pay this man and he could start shaping up my awesome balsa surfboard. But the silly ATM was holding out on me. ¨Your transaction has been declined. Please contact your financial institution for more information.¨ At least I think that´s what it said. Silly Spanish.

So I had my new friend The ATM print me up an account statement because in my previous job as a detective I learned to never leave a stone unturned. Sure enough, I found the problem. Zero dollars. Crazy huh? I thought so too. So that´s when I went to the internet cafe, logged onto my bank, and found the next piece of evidence: a string of ATM withdrawals and one debit purchase of [DOLLAR AMOUNT UNDISCLOSED] at [NAME OF STRIP JOINT UNDISCLOSED].

So, long story long, I don´t have a balsa board after all. :(


...

Anyway, so we spent the remainder of the day thinking about what was to be done about the balsa boards and our stay here in Montañita, thus far it´s been quite inconclusive.. but maybe we´ll go to Guayaquil tomorrow.. maybe.

After our deliberation for the day we got into the water, did some body surfing and then ventured over to where our Californian friends were staying and as it happened there was a soccer game going on just out side so I decided to strengthen foreign relations and sub myself in. It was a simple game, 3 one 3 however once I was in it quickly dissolved into 5 on 1. I held my own. I didn´t necessarly win, but I was definatly a winner and respected myself after a game full of maraculous saves, shots, jukes, and it´s very own share of injuries including but not limited to a skinned knee and rocks in the foot. After the game Jon took a photo of the team all together, including me, and it wasn´t until they hailed to me ¨Hasta Mañana!¨ and I commented to Jon what a tough bunch of folks they were that he informed me that they were all 5, 6, 7 and 8 year olds. I still think I´m cool.

Well, after soccer we ate with the ladies, and after we ate we drew pictures, and after we drew pictures we went down to the beach and that brings me to the top of the screen. Thus ends the day.

Low tide makes for guilt free internet time.

Yesterday we spent the day in Salinas, a larger city just south of Montañita. The city was dirty and filled with sky rise hotels. Unfortunatly there wasn´t much to be seen there. Worse off we spent a large portion of the day talking about the new board Jon was going to buy. It was in one of the shops here and we was excited. Alas, upon return to Montañita the board was sold and gone. Yet another board that Jon couldn´t buy. So the remainder of the day was spent talking with the Balsa House in an attempt to get a good price for a new, custom, board. We were told to wait until today to talk to Rusty.

We went up to the Mountain today to talk to Señior Rusty. Rusty makes the balsa boards. The shop is at the top of the hill and overlooks the entire bay. El Señior can tell when the surf is good simply by peeking out of his three story casita. His shop is just under his house. It´s about a 10´x 10´block of shade and that´s it. All his blanks and lenghts of balsa are every so gentily tucked in the rafters, the floorboards of the level above, of this open shop under his home. Jon and Rusty talked for quite some time as I attempted to listen and pick up as much spanish as possible, but moreso I enjoyed looking about at the number of different blanks he had out and tucked away. Some of the balsa boards are hollow inside making them lighter and better for competition, according to Rusty. The classic solid boards are equally good looking though.

The boards are laminated together with a paste made from rice and water - quite interesting, however, we were also told that he´ll use Gorilla Glue when he needs to put together a borad in a day. I suppose it all depends. So after some time, Jon negotiated a 9´2 board today for a good price and tomorrow we´ll return to the top of the mountian to start the shaping process, hopefully we´ll get to stick around to watch it as the board is extracted from the blank.

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In other news our Canadian friends left town yesterday. It wasn´t more than 5 hours though that they were replaced by 3 California ladies, graduates of Santa Cruz. After many mohitos and beer I think we´re friends. Perhaps we´ll get to give more surf lessons today.



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Our newly revised, curent plan of action is going to be stay in Montañita for another 7-10 days for the board to get finished and then out toward Baños and the Volcano Tupanatuo (the spelling is really of, the volcano that starts with a T and is hard to pronounce) to do our Organic farming and apparently enjoy some hot springs? I can dig it.

And that´s the story.

WWOOFING and other Planning

WWOOFING and other Planning

Spending time online figuring out what our plans out of Montañita will be. Right now it´s a toss up between three, all in the Andes. Tina is in Charusco, Carol is in Tungurahua, and Jose is outside of Otavalo. Most of them seem to harvest similar things, though not all the same, Carol harvests some flowers while Jose tells us what he harvests ¿see anything out of the ordinary? Yeah, we didn´t either.

So, with this information, and information provided by our lovely new Canadian friends, our new route is looking something like this. Exit Montañita in the comming week. Travel south through the banana plantations and then up to Quito/one of these farms generally close to Quito where we´d work for a number of weeks having two days out of the week to travel about the rest of the country taking us up into the north west to the costal town of Monpiche where the surf is average, but the sites beautiful, as well as perhaps a trip to the east into the jungle where we hope to serve our left pinky finger to the animals. One way or another, we´ll be here, in Ecuador, doing .. something.

Oh, and you know that story about not letting the bet bugs bite? .. it´s never hit so close to home. I´m not sleeping with my pancho atop my bed so to avoid such horrors as bites across the geography of my body.. a fate our Canadian companions so unfortunatly did not avoid.

...

While dropping our laundry off - I know, us American babies - we watched very intensely, it was the most excitment I´ve had for days, as a local kid led a trail of corn under a bucket held up by a stick attached to a string. Something I´d probably only seen on Dennis the Mennace. Sure enough the pidegon gobbled up every one of those pieces of corn, all the way under the tub, so percisely propped up... then Snap! down it came. Alas, the bird escaped, but we enjoyed watching every minute of the game.

I think that will end my broken and misspelled entry for today.

....Arrived here in Ecuador....

Arrived here in Ecuador and traversed customs just fine, though our bags where behind us by a few hours, at 6:00 AM on Wednesday. We spent the morning at the local University playing frisbee on their basketball court and talking to students who showed us a good place to get some breakfast. They´ve got some killer fruit here. We then jumped in a cab back to the airport and thankfully had no problem getting our gear. There it was nice and tidy in the American Air baggage cage. Hooray! Once we were set to leave the city, we did. Taking a taxi to the bus station a very friendly kid showed us the proper bus to get on, and promptly took our money in exchange for a ticket and a tip. We got front row seats on the bus that cruized through the hills to the coast, stopping every so often to pick up and drop off - standard bus fare. At one city the bus driver looked at us and started giving us the ¨this is your transfer routine,¨ I think normally I´d have more caution in such an exchange, but they seemed so admit about the whole thing that it was hard not to trust them. They graciously pulled our bags out of the bottom storage and sent us on our way, toward the other bus. This bus crew quickly hiked up the ladder on the side of the bus and pitched both our bags onto the roof with one hand ... strong dude, I think my bag is at least 60 pounds. This bus ride was much more cavalier. Fare was collect by an 8 year old and then given to the old woman right next to me who was the curator of the operation. As for roads, they have them, but it´s like driving in Costa Mesa where repair is few and far between. Knowing this, the drivers take the liberty of avoiding every pot hole possible putting us on both left and right shoulders, making it easy to get to know your neighbor. We finally got to Montiañita where, with our bags, we were quite obvious about our arrival. We picked a spot to stay (The Happy Donkey), got our keys, paid our $3.50 and dropped our gear to scope out the rest of the ´town.´

I´m not really sure how describe this town. It´s small and it´s touristy for other Ecuadorians. After being here for a number of days I´ve learned that this is the beach city for the locals. The city´s extent is a road, that I´ve dubbed Una Via after the only existent street sign, full of mixed use residential. Bars and shops under hostels and habaticiones, essentially rooms for rent. Outside of Una Via there are a few tiendas, but nothing more than some small homes and the main road. Our hotel was at one end of Una VIa and had a view of the bread shop across the way, it wasn´t so bad for living in Ecuador, but....We met some Canadian ladies who moved into our stay the second night and collectively agreed that we could find better living else where, so now we´re neighbors at a much nicer place down the road.

Today was the third day of surf for us. The first day I was surfing a 6´10´´ and preformed fairly well for not knowing the break, the following day the surfing I did was split between a 9´4´´ (the one I was able to walk the nose on) and a 6´8´´ which I had some rides with. The break here is just like San Clemente, beach breaks with short rides, left or right, and fairly inconsistent save the point. The point is where competitions are held and where all the skilled surfers end up. Not being the best short boarder in Montañita, I´ve yet to experience the point surf, though it looks much better than what I´ve been on so far. Further, I´m officially an international ´Surf Instructor.¨ The Canadians are finishing their 3 month stint in Ecuador here in Montañita and wanted to learn to surf. Of course it´s in their best interest to save the $12 for lessons and enjoy their time in the water with some nice American fellas, so yesterday for our services they paid the rental fees. Thus my first bit of work down here.

We´re not sure how long we´re going to stay at this beach resort. We put down $100 for 10 nights at this new place where we´ll both get our own room, bathroom, and hammock. - I think after a while we may be too burnt and too lazy to stay any longer. Though, before we leave Jon´s thinking he wants to buy a balsa board (about $500 for a 9´) I´m thinking I´ll just learn how to make balsa boards and come back to the States and sell those puppies. ¿eh? (you like that double question mark¿? that´s using a fancy Latin keyboard for you.)

I got sick for about a day thus far, not good odds I know, but I´m feeling better now and am going to pay closer attention to what kind of things go into my system. The Canadians said they´ve had their stints of sickness and gave me some pointers on places to go-things to get if it doesn´t settle it´s self out.

Otherwise I´m lying in a hammock and surfing in 73 degree water, it´s tough to beat. Until next time I´m safe and content.

Day 0

Day 0 - We leave at 7:00 AM tomorrow (Tuesday) from Phoenix, less than 24 hours from now I'll be on my way out of the country to a forign place with a couple of bucks, a journal and a passport, a hell of a lot of vaccines, a bosa full of some things, and otherwise, no plans. However, that's not to say we're going into this ignorant.

Let me list some of the things we do know.

We have offers from 3 independent farmers whom are willing to put us up in exchange for work through the week. Further, I have the contact information of an Orange County/Arizona gal who's spent more than a year traveling Ecuador and Peru. Lastly, our friendly Lonely Planet guide book provides us with more than enough information to find lodging, provisions, and good times. Therefore I havn't worried about tomorrow's departure. I am worried about the fact that I don't have my bag packed nor do I know how we're getting to the airport in the morning, but I suppose we'll make it happen.

Based on an email I read it seems like these are some pictures of one of the farms available for us two work on. http://www.tor.cc/photos/never-never-land/

.

Logistics -
If you need to contact me email john.patrick.mizell@gmail.com
I will also post itenary as I know it, ammending it to the bottom of this post.

Current Itenary:
To Ecuador: (empezar la aventura)

Date:	21MAR - TUESDAY
Flight :	AMERICAN AIRLINES		1476
Departure:	PHOENIX		7:37 AM
Arrival:	CHICAGO OHARE		11:47 AM
	JOHN MIZELL
		SEAT 34A	COACH
Date:	21MAR - TUESDAY
Flight :	AMERICAN AIRLINES		1342
Departure:	CHICAGO OHARE		1:27 PM
Arrival:	MIAMI INTERNTNL		5:30 PM
	JOHN MIZELL
		SEAT 28F	COACH
Date:	21MAR - TUESDAY
Flight :	AMERICAN AIRLINES		933
Departure:	MIAMI INTERNTNL		7:02 PM
Arrival:	GUAYAQUIL		11:12 PM
	JOHN MIZELL
		SEAT 23A	COACH

To Galpagos: (para giggles o risita entrecortada y tonta)

To Quito: (the Capital)

To Montanita: (para el oleaje)

To U.S.: (para me mama)

11MAY - THURSDAY
AMERICAN AIRLINES		952
GUAYAQUIL		9:30 AM
MIAMI INTERNTNL		2:43 PM
JOHN MIZELL
	SEAT 21A	COACH
11MAY - THURSDAY
AMERICAN AIRLINES		1945
MIAMI INTERNTNL		4:05 PM
DALLAS FT WORTH		6:12 PM
JOHN MIZELL
	SEAT 36J	COACH
11MAY - THURSDAY
AMERICAN AIRLINES		1849
DALLAS FT WORTH		8:15 PM
PHOENIX		8:45 PM
JOHN MIZELL
	SEAT 22F	COACH