The big long travel post

I'm in a good mood. We just had a wonderful chicken picatta, the spartans are absolutely destroying Penn State, and i'm finishing the bottle of spanish red that we opened on Sunday.

Summers rebounds! He puts it in!

Ahh.

I've thrown a bunch of the shots up from my trip southernly on flickr, and you can find them here. I was down in Ecuador installing a pair of 10 meter tall towers to record hydrological weather data for a proposed gold mine. The camp has been there for a few years, but only until a year and a half ago had built the road that gets all the way into their largest camp. A geologist who had began work there July of 2006 told me that they drove as far as they could, then had to bushwack through the jungle for 13 kilometers, and then their equipment and supplies would arrive the following day. On a canoe.

Luckily, i was there when roads and technology had been severely upgraded, and even managed to get a lot of work done via the satellite internet connection than i did during the three days of travel down into the site. In fact, a few friends said that i chatted them up online more when i was along the southern single lattitude than i do normally. Which is probably true.


Leaving Colorado on a Tuesday morning, i had my name punched for a seat on a flight bound from Miami to Quito that afternoon. The wonderful weather put us in a que for the de-icing pad before we could leave, and i knew i was going to be missing my connecting flight even before we had gotten more than 100 foot away from our Denver terminal.

Sure enough, upon arrival i was too late, and spent a few frantic minutes trying to get the advice of the Canadian office for whom i was performing this trip for while the guy behind the American desk brusquely printed me up a new ticket for the following afternoon. Did you know that it is American Airlines policy to officially not care about the fact that you missed your connection if it is due to weather? True story! I inquired about the possibility of a voucher for a hotel room or a meal, and was met with a pleasant, but vacant, stare. He did eventually fished out a coupon for a room at a holiday inn 30 minutes away, and went about his business. Upon inspection, i realized that the coupon in question was to the exact same hovel that we had stayed the year prior, when we had missed our connection before in Miami. I remembered non-working hot water in the bathrooms and the stale smell of smoke in the sheets, and quickly decided that i wouldn't be returning, and got a room at a nearby holiday inn express instead.

The following afternoon found me getting aboard a 757 and within the day arriving in Quito. Eventually tracking down my luggage, and also eventually realizing the guy who was supposed to be picking me apparently decided he had better things to do, i selected a cab from one of the six (6!) drivers hounding me and directed him towards the hotel. This was a reservation made by the client, and was at the Marriott in New Town. Upon arrival, you immediately feel out of place and are quickly mistaken for someone who has a lot of money. It's quite odd. In the lonely planet guide that i bought a few months back, i spent some time looking over what hostels that i would most likely stay in on my own... and was hithero utterly unprepared for glass chandeliers and spoken english. It certainly makes you feel like a spoiled American, even if it isn't actually your money that you're spending.

Back to the airport in the morning, i managed to check into a flight without speaking a complete phrase in any of the ticketing personnel's native language. Impressive, i am. The flight from Quito to Loja is a quick, 45 minute (cross country) jaunt, and walking onto the runway i figure we'll be entering a dual propped puddle jumper. As I'm contemplating all of the fun ways our plane could plummet into the working maw of an active volcano i realize that we're getting on a large jet. No wonder it's such a quick trip!

Ramon is picking me up. I was told via email that Ramon would be meeting me at the Loja airport. I disembark and wait for my luggage, and stare at the parking area where a dozen or so individuals are waiting for our flight to move outside. I attempt to decipher which one of them is Ramon. They all look like Ramons. Crap. I finally decide that the one guy holding the half piece of looseleaf notebook with a name on it that i can't make out, wearing an Ohio State (?) hat is Ramon. He must be Ramon. He has on Big Ten paraphenalia. He seems friendly. Also, i am slightly larger than him in case he is not. My desperate attempts to make eye contact are abated by the further requests by cabbies to give them money, and it becomes apparent that this is not Ramon. Great.

A tap on my shoulder and spoken English unfurls my brow. I meet a guy named Ed, a Canadian, actually, who i've exchanged a few emails with and who i am in country to work for. He had been on the same flight down, and upon finding me we pile into a truck with his other coworkers and get breakfast in town.

Its odd being in a foreign country where in you speak such minuscule amounts of the native language. Part of you feels incredibly ignorant for traveling without knowing how to communicate, and the other part feels slightly pathetic that you simply cannot follow any of the conversations happening around you. It takes a few days of being immersed in it before you can allow yourself to relax, to accept the fact that there may be people talking about you without your knowledge sitting directly next to you, to let the apprehension of having to respond to someone drain a bit when you're trying to order lunch. Needless to say, at a breakfast table of ten people, i sat and did my best to feign interest, or even cognizance, of what the heck was going on.

It's an odd feeling to sit through an hour long breakfast conversation in which you can utterly not participate. Suddenly the act of crossing, and then uncrossing your legs, examining pictures and wall coverings, and ensuring your shoes are tied take up precious little moments of your time and attention, all in a sad attempt to not looking like a drooling moron, smiling and nodding along with the rest of your party when they all most likely know you have no clue as to what you are grinning along about. When the beverages come, they offer a new form of respite in what you can give attention to - careful timing of taking drinks and metering out action is added to the rotation of leg crossing's and staring the painting of a burro on the wall across from you. The food takes forever to arrive, and when it does you've finally made it home, you can just eat your plate of huevos and not have to use up your social energies in raising your eyebrows when you think appropriate and smiling when the rest of the group laughs. Don't eat too quickly, though, no matter how hungry you are, because there's nothing worse than having nothing to do with your hands or eyes if you finish five, ten minutes before anyone else. No, savor that pancake, sip your coffee, take your precious time and stretch your convenient breakfast prop.

Foreign travel can be exhausting.

The drive from town to camp takes 4 hours, and gives me a view of a very non-tourist part of Ecuador that is filled with swinging dirt roads, small towns of tiny shacks and a lot of stray dogs. It is all lush and wonderful, so extreme in it's landscape but also soft at the same time, with all of these trees and the sound of running water no matter where you are.


When we arrive at camp I meet a few of the geologist ex-pats who are here verifying and inspecting all of the coring samples being done by the driller crews. They live at camp in 2 week shifts, and have the platform next to mine for sleeping, with a grill, fridge, stove for cooking their own occasional meal. One of them obliges us that night with dinner, and at dusk i find myself enjoying grilled salmon with potatoes and a California Syrah that i managed to pack into the country from home. Not gonna lie, it's not a bad gig.

The following morning finds me with a crew of 5 guys, who are mine to direct and assemble our first tower. I use my best charades skills, combined with a few broken words of spanish and i'll be darned if we don't get the thing up before lunchtime ends. I'm really quite excited as to how well and quickly the whole install goes, and i spend the remainder of the afternoon checking the towers computer for regularity. The following day is time for the second tower, a kilometer up the mesa from camp and down a nice, deep, mud trail. This tower takes even less time and effort, as my crew (now down to 3) has working knowledge of what it takes to complete it, and we are done even earlier. Happy with the results, i take pictures, shake hands, and we hoof it back down the mountain to camp.

Originally, we had scheduled 3 and 2 days apiece for each tower, and at the end of day 2 i was wondering what i was going to do with my time. Luckily, the first tower, the one in camp, didn't seem to be working correctly as i awoke on day 3, as if it was some backwards form of help in filling up the remainder of my time in camp. After some investigation, i realize that i have no idea what is wrong and begin scribing slightly frantic emails to my office, the maker of the tower's office, to my wife. To anyone who may have an idea of how to help, really.

By the end of day 5, we determine that the battery that shipped with the tower is the perpetrator for the inconsistent behavior, and we manage to find a replacement that is almost too perfect: it holds the correct amount of power, and is the perfect literal size to fit inside the tower's enclosure. I feel relieved, joyous, and happy that i will be able to begin the journey home the following day.

On the return trip, we take the day to get back to Loja, then to Quito. The following morning i hop standby for an earlier flight into Miami, and Pops drives down from Nettles Island to grab some lunch and a drink on South Beach to watch the water and all the pretty people. Miami didn't seem so horrible this time, on the return trip, knowing that i wouldn't be sleeping there tonight and would get to see my wifey soon.

We beach walk and catch up on good family news and gossip, and i return to the airport and embark to Denver without incident. Finally, around 9:30 at night, 10 days after i had originally left, i returned to my front door and layed out on the couch for an hour or so. Bliss.

There were many more snafus, many more moments of dread and worry, many other moments of hilarity and plenty of sweat - but all in all was a good trip, and a measured success for being my first real out of country work experience. I made some good friends in country who told me to find a way to get sent back, or in the least attempt to get some time to come down and see the other parts of Ecuador that i missed, as a tourist. In the light of the cold temperatures i drove through this morning, it sounds more and more like a great idea....