A New Bus Station for Quito

I know that Quito's main bus terminal is every traveler's favorite place. Aren't luggage slashers, dark and dank quarters and vendors screaming the names of pueblos you'd never want to go everyone's idea of a good time?

The folks at V!VA Travel Guides just posted a nice comprehensive list of links related to the closure of Quito's main bus terminal, Terminal Terrestre de Cumandá. Here you'll find most everything you need to figure out which bus terminal to use, how to get to it, and how much it costs (in Spanish and English).

Flights to Máncora, Peru

For all you surfistas who are trying to get to Máncora for waves, there's good news. Star Peru has just started a flight from Lima to Talara through Cajamarca. You still have to jump a bus or taxi for the 40-minute ride to Máncora, but it beats bussing the whole way or flying to Tumbes and backtracking two hours.

The flight goes three times a week, but I refer you to the website (and the 7th edition of Lonely Planet Peru, due out next year) for the most up-to-date times and prices.

South American Explorers

My review of the new Ecuador Hiking and Climbing Guide, by Mark Thurber and Rob Rachowiecki (V!VA Travel Guides), is out now in the April 2009 edition of South American Explorers Magazine. If your clicking finger is tired, check it out here:

Writing guidebooks for Ecuador, as with much of Latin America, is like aiming at a moving target — prices rise, governments fall, businesses close. But if that's tricky, try navigating the region's equally fickle landscape, which is always undergoing some grand transformation.

Despite erupting volcanoes, avalanches, and unpredictable weather, the Ecuador Hiking and Climbing Guide (V!VA Travel Guides, 2009) has kept leisurely day-hikers and hard-core climbers pointed in the right direction for more than two decades. Now in an updated and expanded sixth edition with a new publisher, Rob Rachowiecki and Mark Thurber's guide retools dozens of trips, from coastal day-hikes to high-páramo treks to multi-day jungle jaunts.

Also an essential outfitter's resource, the guide includes where to buy food and hardware, rent a full rack of climbing gear and hire guides and porters. New quick-reference hiking and climbing "matrices" list the particulars of every trip, including distances, altitude, weather and the exact topo map to buy at the Military Geographical Institute (a visit to this buttoned-up institution is all part of the fun).

The hikes are the guide's biggest strength. The authors interpret plenty of easy and moderate tramps that are perfect for newbies, even at 10,000 feet above sea level, and for long-haul trekkers there are detailed backcountry routes through the Avenue of the Volcanoes, including such classics as the Trek of the Condor and the northernmost end of the Inca Trail. If birds, rural life, or hot springs are your thing, the matrices will help you pick out the best trail, and the hiking maps have been entirely revamped and now show GPS coordinates.

Mountaineers can select from more than a dozen milder ascents to prepare for tough technical peaks or big summits over 18,000 feet. The authors threw out the last edition's tired black-and-white mountain graphics and opted for super-imposing the climbing routes over high-quality photographs. This fresh scheme gives sharper, more accurate perspectives of the climbs, ones that should dull less quickly against the surprisingly swift pace of change in Andean terrain. The climbing instructions, however, ultimately work best as intelligent planning advice and pre-ascent psych-outs rather than as substitutes for certified guides (unless your crampons are truly well worn).

For the armchair climber who opts to hang by the fire while his buddies set out on a moonlight climb, there's also good reading about Edward Whymper's record-breaking summits during the 1880s, long before Gore-tex and climbing guides hit the market.

Aimée Dowl is a co-author of Lonely Planet's Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands.

LONELY PLANET PERU

I've just signed on to Lonely Planet's Peru title, to be released in 2010. It looks like I will be working with a super team of authors who live in Peru and who have all kinds of journalism, travel writing, guiding, and aid and development experience.

I'll do some posts, maybe emphasizing similarities and differences between Peru and Ecuador as I research the North Coast, Huaraz & the Cordillera Blanca, and the Northern Highlands. Derek will be birding some of the Northern Highlands with me—he'll probably have some photos up on his blog or a related site in mid-summer—but as usual, it's a lot of solo travel . . . and then a lot of solo writing.

Hang on this . . .

Close to 6% of all home energy use in the United States comes from clothes dryers, and the figure for Ecuador would probably be comparable—though, unsurprisingly, unavailable—if more than a few homes had a dryer.

Derek and I are among a small percentage of people in Ecuador who do have a clothes washer and an even smaller number who own a clothes dryer, but thanks to my beloved clothesline, that 6% is a wash.

If you do your laundry in a river, which is common method here and around the world, it is possible that you aren't actually wasting any water cleaning your clothes, but hand-washing your clothes using a domestic or public water tap—also a common task here—is a huge drain on the water supply. In fact, if you use a machine you could actually be using the same amount or even less water as hand-washing.


In either case, however, here in Ecuador, whether you use a machine, a community laundering station or Nature's laundromat, the soap and other toxic chemicals eventually end up in a watershed somewhere, of some kind. To help offset the damage of the runoff, biodegradable soaps are available in Quito and around the country, not to mention the various kinds of natural cleaning agents to be found in Ecuador's flora. Unfortunately, the number of people who use these eco-friendly cleaners is dismally low.

So, the verdict on clothes washing machines: depends.

The dryer, though, now that's a different story entirely. Ours is an ancient GE that has been handed down to us and is probably a good twenty-plus years old. At first, we used it a little, then we cut down to using it when it rained and or when something dearly needed a warm toss, and now we just can't be bothered. Like nearly all Ecuadorians, we always tote the wet laundry out to the line, where it can dry under the equatorial sun in a shockingly short amount of time — sometimes much more quickly than in the GE's searing fluff cycle.

While washing machines certainly provide a measure of convenience, they now seem entirely superfluous to me -- a luxury as easy to abandon as television, dishwashers or Kleenex. Having said this, though, I still believe that household appliances were/are great liberators, especially for American women in the postwar era and women chained to the domestic responsibilities around the globe. And you won't see me giving up my favorites anytime soon.

I guess the point of these points, however, is that many customs in the developing world that look "green" to heavy consumers in the Global North are simply practical cost-saving measures or simply a lack of alternative: line-drying, river-washing, natural soaps, reusing glass beer and water bottles, turning grain sacks into tarps, etc.

And hey, line-dried clothes smell great—even better with a little lilac or honeysuckle growing nearby.

Plane Crash

Sadly, a plane crash took the lives of seven people in Quito last night in an area of the city that has suffered aviation catastrophes before. The neighborhood where it happened is along Gonzalez Suarez, an upscale avenue of high rises that sits right in a major flight path over Quito. The week of December 10, 1998, the residents here witnessed not one, but two planes crash into buildings on their street.

Now we can add to Facebook's list, "You know you have lived in Quito when . . ." the less humorous entry, "Planes slamming into buildings is an all too frequent occurrence."

This one comes right after the existing, "You have become accustomed to breaking up the conversation for the 757 to fly over."

This image of Quito culled from Google Earth might help explain why this happens here, and why the airport being built in the countryside east of Quito couldn't be more urgent.


The projected airport has also prompted the following entries to the Facebook list:

Take-off is aborted because the runway isn't long enough for the plane to get enough speed to take off.
You don't expect for the new airport to open in 2020, much less 2010, when it's scheduled to open.
You have asphyxiated from the dust cloud thrown up by the dirt track that will someday be the new runway.

Reciprocity Fees in National Geographic Traveler

My comments about visa reciprocity fees appear in this month's National Geographic Traveler magazine. It is a brief response to Christopher Elliot's 'Letter to the President' in the November/December 2008 issue and on Nat Geo's Intelligent Travel Blog.

This only appears in the mag's Travel Talk section (March 2009).

"Many countries have begun issuing visa reciprocity fees for visitors to counter the high tariffs imposed during the U.S. visa process. While paying $131 to visit Chile or [$100 to visit] Suriname may not seem like much money to some, imagine the costs to a backpacker, businessperson, or family of four on a multicountry journey. The U.S. should look hard at the policies that have inspired these fees and consider whether the revenue from foreign visa applications is worth the financial hardship for travelers."

Among other issues raised by the Dear Mr President letter was the critical need for a National [high-speed] Railroad System.

LET THEM CHEW COCA...

Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia has an Op-Ed in the New York Times today. He asks why it is against international law to chew coca leaf and "Why is Bolivia so concerned with the coca leaf?"

He answers, "Because it is an important symbol of the history and identity of the indigenous cultures of the Andes.

The custom of chewing coca leaves has existed in the Andean region of South America since at least 3000 B.C. It helps mitigate the sensation of hunger, offers energy during long days of labor and helps counter altitude sickness. Unlike nicotine or caffeine, it causes no harm to human health nor addiction or altered state, and it is effective in the struggle against obesity, a major problem in many modern societies."

Read the rest of his Opinion piece here at the New York Times.

(Evo's sweater is also a symbol of Andean culture because it's made of alpaca, a camelid mammal native to the Andes. My partner, Derek Kverno, has the exact same super-soft Bolivian pullover that Evo is wearing in this picture.*)

*AP photo/Victor Caivano

GLAMOUR BIRDS

My partner in birding crime, Derek, just posted this beautiful picture of a Booted Racket-Tail on his blog. He took the shot at Paz de los Aves, the antpitta mecca owned and run by the famous Ángel Paz near Mindo. I hate to divert from Coolcoper today, but go check out Derek's Birding Ecuador blog for a description of this very special place.

In addition to this glamorous little guy (yes, it's the male), Paz de los Aves has other haute-couture hummers and a raucous Cock of the Rock lek.



For the true five-star birds and more about Ángel Paz, please go here.







Violet-Tailed Sylph

Copyright Violation

Dear Facebook Management Team,

Thanks to the extraordinary power of social networking and the innovative third-party applications you include on Facebook, expats in Quito have been able to share their insider knowledge about life at 2850 meters. I am cutting and pasting it here today, with due acknowledgement that you own all of the words and images posted on Facebook . . . maybe . . . whoever "you" are.

Sincerely,
The Cooloper

YOU KNOW YOU'VE LIVED IN QUITO WHEN (just a selection):

-there is a reina for everything!
-you have been called: reina, querida, preciosa, mi hijita, mi amor, guapa, gringa, mamacita...
-Futbol is more important than anything!
-if the doors on the bus still shut then it´s not full enough
-milk and eggs are not refrigerated??
-you know someone who has had a bot fly
-answering your phone catches you off guard. Why didn't they just text me?
-you can´t breathe at an intersection
-$3 for lunch is really expensive
-buses, taxis, motorcycles, police vehicles, and even the bikes honk at the gringas
-you have almost been killed crossing a round-about
-the street dogs are smarter at crossing the roads than we are
-you´ve stopped laughing at the names SuperMaxi and MegaMaxi...but you secretly still find them entertaining
-you can go from overheated to freezing in 30 minutes
-the Mariscal and Gringolandia are synonymous

Old Town Quito
Ivan Kashinsky for the New York Times











-you wonder how in the world they get 121 songs on a cd and still sell them for a dollar
-the mountain view never gets old
-Coca-Cola is the new water and it even tastes better
-old town Quito feels like a different city
-you have become accustomed to breaking up the conversation for the 757 to fly over
-roses are 25 for $1 and still thought of as special

-all the buses have curtains with fringe on the windows
-a bus isn´t official if it doesn´t have a Jesus sign of some sort
-Slug bug mini-van!
-there are more KFC´s in all of Quito than in the state of Wisconsin
-there is a certain button on the taxi meters for gringos - it charges more
-there are three races outside of Latin: chinos, gringos, negros
-you have seen every Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone movie on the buses
-you have never seen so many different types and sizes of bananas
-you have no respect or care in the world for the police officers
-the electricity goes out for apparently no reason
-no hot water? oh well
-sometimes you need five different keys just to enter your house
-family dogs hang out on the roof
-you know it's 3:30pm because of the thunderstorm
-throwing toilet paper in the waste basket instead of the toilet has become a habit
-you still get upset when Terminal Terrestre charges you 20cents to leave the crappy place
-a credit card means nothing, just some plastic
-pizza delivery comes faster than the ambulance
-anything chévere is chévere
-the public are more scared of the president than the active volcanos that surround the city
-you have witnessed a political protest or overthrow
- a ceviche cures a chuchaqui
- you hand a cashier a 50 cent piece for something that costs 30 cents and they ask you if you have any smaller coins
- "Payless" is really PayMORE
- you have to wait about 3 days for your clothes to dry because they got caught in probably four rain storms being on the roof

and my very own . . .
- take-off is aborted because the runway isn't long enough for the plane to get enough speed to take off
- you don't expect for the new airport to open in 2020, much less 2010, when it's scheduled to open
- you have asphyxiated from the dust cloud thrown up by the dirt track that will someday be the new runway