Turkey: The final episode

I did exactly what I swore I wouldn’t do!!  This post should’ve been written in Turkey, amidst the moments as they happened, but now I’m back.  I’m learning that it’s easy to just jump right back into your life, making all the adventures seem like a bizarre dream… I’ve been trying to think about them and look at photos often, and hopefully haven’t been too obnoxious about it when chatting with friends (old and new… more on that later). Here are a few stories from Turkey, glad to have a reason to tell them again, after over a month since coming back!

I spent the last 3 weeks of the whole 8 month trip in Western Turkey, and took the time to squeeze out all the excitement I could. I split the time roughly in to two parts:  I took the first 10 days or so to ride a motorbike out of Istanbul and around the Troad coast, passing along the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles, and the ancient city of Troy.  After returning to Istanbul, I was so lucky to have a visit from Cora who was just starting her own solo travel adventure through Europe.  We had an awesome time, and she left just in time to miss a stroll through some tear gas on Istiklal street during a demonstration.

Here is a giant album from the motorbike tour… decided to ditch the bicycle at a hotel for awhile and try out a slightly faster set of wheels.  So. Fun.  I’m glad I did too, because I wouldn’t’ve had been able to make the whole loop had I gone on a bike (and the wind was crazy at times!).  For the route, I used this for inspiration, and ended up passing through the following places: Istanbul to Bandirma (by ferry), Bandirma to Gönen, Gönen to Biga, Biga to Çanakkale (via an out-and-back visit to Gallipoli), Çanakkale to Bozcaada Island (by ferry, after a visit to Troy), Bozcaada to Babakale (westernmost point in Turkey!), Babakale to Asos, Asos to Akçay, Akçay back to Bandirma, and then back to Istanbul by ferry. You can see the route here, just zoom in to Turkey.  I took about 10 days to do this, and along the way I had cherries by the roadside, made a 75-year old friend on a nearly-deserted island, helped someone reconnect with an old friend via Skype, and ate as much baklava and turkish delight as I could take.

The little street where I stayed the first couple of nights in Istanbul (Hotel Torun). This place ended up being a sort of home base, where I kept my bike while I was out traveling on the coast.

MmmmmmBaklava….

Mehmet, who runs the place where I rented this sweet ride. He runs a hotel called New Pera in Beyoglu Istanbul, and rents scooters as well. http://rentascooteristanbul.com/#!/page_gallery

This placed called my name, somehow.

A beer in Istanbul does NOT cost $1, in contrast to just about every other place I went.

Waiting in line to board the ferry from Istanbul to Bandirma… thanks, Seattle, for teaching me how the whole process works!

Out on the south side of the Sea of Marmara, the terrain started out really flat and windy… saw tons of these wind generators.

Street cats. This was one really unique thing about turkey… almost no street dogs, but tons of (very healthy-looking) cats.

After learning that “Pansiyon” means about the equivalent of “hostel” in turkey, I had a ton of fun meeting new folks and staying on budget. This was Arda Pansiyon in Biga… Arda is the 15-yr old on the couch, and his mom is sitting next to me. The place as fantastic and they were really fun. Google translate did an amazing job helping with communication in Turkish (unlike in Vietnamese…).

Pretty view from the motorbike… it was cool to see Minarets poking up out of the hillsides.

RRRRRrrrrrtt!!! Couldn’t pass this by… lucky to be there during cherry season!

Along with cherries, the nice woman was selling Erik(?), or these green tart mini-plums. They were good, but couldn’t eat too man after putting away a couple pounds of cherries.

A van, down by the river (Dardanelles)

Midye Dolmas… or rice-stuffed mussels. I tried these on a recommendation from Seda and Serdar, and they were amazing. They’re sold on the street in Istanbul and lots of other places… put your food safety fears aside and try (at least) one!

I was on my way to Canakkale, but wanted to take a ferry over the Dardanelles to Gallipoli. I found the ferry port in Cardak, and met this guy and his dad while I waited for the ferry. I feel bad I can’t remember his name, but he took me out for a loop around the area in his fishing boat. We realized we both spoke a little German, so it was funny trying to get by in a language neither of us knew very well. I imagine this is a really crude version of what my ESL science colleagues experience all the time. The guy also told me (in German) that my facebook picture was not a very good one. WTF, thanks!

Motorbike on a ferryboat, crossing the dardanelles from Asia into Europe!

Produce market in Gallipoli… these made me wish I liked olives

Gallipoli cheesemonger!

Delicious market snack… cucumber with fresh cream cheese and a spicy pepper paste (Aji Biber).

I went to a war museum in Gallipoli, and it was cool but everything was in Turkish so I didn’t understand a whole lot. I was pretty amused by the toilet seat in the museum’s bathroom too…

Gas for the scooter was so expensive… 1 Turkish Lira = 50 cents or so… cost me over $10 to fill the scooter tank. I could fill my scooter tank in Seattle for about $4.

I wasn’t riding a bike at this time, but I still had a radar for em.

Clocktower in Canakkale

Bike and boats, in Canakkale

These street cats knew just where to hang out!

Headed south from Canakkale, to the ancient city of Troy. I was excited, but also a little bummed that I had never actually read the Iliad or Odyssey, and didn’t do nearly enough research in advance to appreciate fully what I was about to see.

Here’s a color-coded cross section of the current idea about all of the Troy ruins. There were actually many Troy cities, built above and around previous ones. It was unclear how archaeologists figured out the order in which each city was built, but the whole place is like many concentric rings on a large elevated mound. Colors indicate time… see the time scale bar.

Troy

Part of a ceiling piece in Troy… it was pretty awesome that these had been preserved for so long (since 2000-3000 BC?!)

An Australian guy and his mom, who I met at the Pansiyon in Canakkale and saw again at Troy.

I think the signs said this was an event hall, or a place where a king would hold court or give speeches.

Good ol’ Honda Fizy 125…

A pretty mosque along the way from Troy to the Geyikkli Ferry dock.

Not much traffic at this point… apparently tourist season here officially starts in June, so I was a little early.

Olive trees, I think…

On the ferry to Bozcaada island (pronounced “bo-JAH-da”)… I couldn’t believe that this dude in the pink tie AND the traveling musician came together in the same ridiculous photo for me. Thanks, guys.

This is Ratip, who I met on the Ferry. His daughter has a Pansiyon on the island and in very little english he enthusiastically suggested I come and stay there. I said thanks, I’ll look around. I did know at the time that Ratip would end up curating my entire visit to the island.

I got to the island with the scooter, thanked Ratip, and said I’d prefer to wander around first and find a place to stay on my own, but that I’d hold onto his card for sure. The island was strangely deserted though! I knocked on the doors of 3 Pansiyons and hotels and there was literally no one there.

After about an hour of searching, I found myself in front of Ratip’s daughter’s Pansiyon. It was a really nice place, and he gave me a good deal. He also introduced me to all his friends (he seemed to know everyone on the island!) and showed me all the postcards he had received from guests over the last 20 years. So cute… he hardly spoke English but had a pretty unmistakeable smile.

I spent two nights on Bozcaada, after the first I took the scooter and rode by myself all around. I stopped at the beach (requisite grass-umbrella beach shot, sorry).

My island tour continues, after lunch at the beach.

Bozcaada is famous in turkey for its wine grapes and wineries.

Huge wind farm… these generators produce enough power for 20,000 homes (according to a sign nearby).

Bozcaada coast.

More coastline, almost back to where I started.

Stopped for a little wine taste on the way…

Around the town on Bozcaada

Tiny cobblestone streets… almost entirely to myself.

I asked Ratip where I could buy some wine from the island, and he took me here. I tried to pay for the wine, and the other guy wouldn’t let me… I think Ratip actually owns the winery where these are made. So nice!!

It looks like two people could be eating here, at this awesome table by the marina. But nope, this was a date with myself. Had to try two kinds of wine. 🙂

Ratip’s friend Hasan (in Red), who runs this little coffee stand. We hung out here a lot. After I got back from my motorbike island tour and in the morning before I left, I could count on finding Ratip and his buds here. It was really cool to have some people to go drink tea and coffee with. Ratip is on the right.

After leaving Bozcaada in the morning by ferry, I took a route along the coast and stopped in a little town for a tea and a walk along this jetty.

The climate was really dry and windy… lots of scrubby grassland plants like this.

This leg of the trip was the most rural and the most desserted… I think I saw maybe two cars over 80 km or so. It was fun to be on some really tiny roads.

Stopped into this little village to ask about something to eat for lunch… I think I interruped a group of men who were hanging out just outside a mosque. I liked this turquoise door on a house in the same town.

A salt flat! Oh Halophiles, can’t give you up!

Cool salt brine… sorry guys, I didn’t bring back a sample.

Headed out to Babakale, the westernmost tip of the country.

On the castle in Babakale.

On the way from Babakale to Asos.

I found this hotel in Asos for a good deal… turns out I was the only one staying in the whole place. There wasn’t really a town associated with the area… just some hotels along a long strip of beach.

Went for a walk in Asos before heading to bed.

Continuing along the coast, from Asos to Akcay.

After leaving Asos, I didn’t actually know where I would stop for the day, but after grabbing lunch in Akcay, I had to stay the night. This was probably my favorite town on the route…. cool oceanfront public space, markets, lots of people but not obnoxiously much…

Some dudes outside playing Rummikub

I loved all the long coats and scarves! Most of the time I was glad I wasn’t the one wearing them (it was pretty warm out!), but they were pretty.

This is Turan Senner, the loud and friendly proprietor of my Pansiyon, Hotel Set. This guy was fantastic… he had lived in the US for 10 years (in the 80s-90s) and had been back in Turkey ever since. He was really into Turkish rap music and I’ve been collecting music on the trip, so we had fun YouTubing for his favorites. At the time he was also having trouble figuring out how to connect with a longtime friend in the US via Facebook or Skype. Long story short, I was able to help him figure it out and we got his friend in NYC on the phone that same evening. So fun to see the two of them reconnect!

View from the top deck of Hotel Set in Akcay.

So many dates!!! The big ones in the middle are my favorite… they’re called Kudus, from Israel.

Since Turkey was my last stop, I bought a ton of these cool handpainted dishes to bring home. Only one bowl was broken when I got back to the US!

Lunch cafe in Akcay.

On the road again… roadside produce stand between Akcay and Balikesir.

Headed back to Bandirma… I was going tostay the night in another town, Balikesir, but when I stopped and asked someone where the central district was, he looked at me and asked “really? You want to stay here? I’d just keep going to Bandirma.” So I did, and I was glad. Mehmet, the nice guy who rented me the scooter, had mentioned his mom and sister lived in Bandirma and to call if I wanted to meet them. I called Mehmet and he called his sister… so nice to have a family waiting for me when I arrived.

Mehmet’s mom (Muzeyyen), his sister’s husband (Cuneyt), and his sister, Hacer. So, so nice to meet them and to stay with a family. It had been awhile.

Muzeyyen took me all around Bandirma the next day, before my ferry back to Istanbul. This is in one of the street markets.

Chicks in a street market.

We walked on a rainbow!!!

This is the Quran… I had never seen it before. I obviously can’t read arabic, but it was really beautiful just to look at the script. Muzeyyen was also really kind and answered my questions about the 5 prayers a day, and showed me how she prays at home. I knew “Muslims pray 5 times a day,” but had no idea what this looks like. She showed me how she washes her face, hands and feet, and then lays her prayer mat down facing Mecca. Then there’s a series of hand gestures where you cross your hands over your chest, and touch your face (apologies to my Muslim friends for probably messing this up!). There’s also a string of beads, reminiscient of a rosary, with beads that symbolize the 33 prayer recitations. She also told me all about the Muezzins, or the men who chant the call to prayer every day 5 times. I wondered if it was ever a recording played over a loud speaker… nope, there’s a guy who sings (recites?) the call to prayer, 5 times, every day!

Love these little coffee shops with nuts and treats.

She also showed me how to where a scarf… so many ways to wrap these things!

Back in Istanbul at Hotel Torun… this is Nigora, who works at the hotel and has an interesting story. She’s Uzbek and a journalist, but has grown up in Kyrgyzstan. She worked for a Kyrgyz TV network, but was fired when Kyrgyz nationalists came to power and didn’t like the way she was telling the news. There is historically anti-Uzbek sentiment in this country, and she told me she lost her job when the political climate changed. So, she came to Turkey and is working in the hotel while trying to find a way to continue as a journalist there. She speaks Turkish (We were able to talk through google translate, and a document she had translated into English about her career story). It’s a pretty amazing summary she’s written… happy to share with anyone interested in reading it.

 

Back in Istanbul, I returned the scooter to Mehmet, and found my way on the Tram to the airport to pick up Cora!!! So excited to see her and have a Seattle pal to explore the city with.  I didn’t see much of Istanbul before she arrived, so it was new for both of us.  She was just starting a month-long trip around Europe, and it was amazing to travel a few days with someone who had fresh eyes and a less road-weary perspective.  It made the end of my trip new again and I am really grateful to her for that. We had a blast shopping, sightseeing, wandering, eating, and learning our way around.  The day she left was the one-year anniversary of last year’s Istiklal square protest, where police killed 7 people.  A memorial had been planned, and the entire city seemed to be in shutdown mode. It was exciting in a slightly scary “what’s about to happen??” kind of way, to experience something like what we’ve seen in the news over here, and to talk with people about the whole thing in person. Finally, I spent the last few days visiting other places in the city, including the 600-year old Cemberlitas Hamam… a Turkish spa where you basically go to take a bath in public.  Rather, people bathe you.  Fun, but a little weird. Here’s an album from Istanbul, minus the Turkish Hamam.  No photos allowed in there!

 

At the Grand Bazaar w/ Cora! We stopped at a Fez shop.

Scarves at the grand bazaar… btw, this is about the worst place to actually buy things in Istanbul, since it’s basically the market for tourists. Of course we bought things anyway.

This pepper paste was my favorite thing, and it was fun to taste the homemade stuff at the spice market.

Whoa, someone else to take/be in photos with me!

On the ferry across the Bosphorus to the Asian side…

Washing up before going into a mosque

Can’t be dirty in the Mosque

The tiles were really beautiful, and the carpet was sooo soft and squishy on our bare feet. We had to wait til a few men inside had left, before we could go in and walk around.

Loved all the Iznik tiles

A calendar telling you exactly what time of day each of the 5 prayers should be done.

Walking through a cemetery on the Asian side of the Bosphorus

There was a funny exhibit of exercise equipment on the riverfront pavillion in uskudar (Asian side)

PUMPING IRON!!!

This ended up being way more expensive than we thought! Basically you pay to shoot a little BB pistol at these baloons.

Bosphorus tour!

The Bosphorus bridge

Bosphorus bridge

Stopped for lunch in a small town, the northernmost stop on the boat tour. You can take the public ferry up the Bosphorus and stop wherever you want, and then just get back on when you’re done.

Lunch on the northeast side of the Bosphorus

Turkish tea! Turns out Turkey is top in the world for national tea consumption… not surprised!

Back in Istanbul… visiting the Hagia Sofya.

The Hagia Sofiya has a really cool history, because it was originally a Catholic Cathedral. It burned down and was rebuilt twice, and was converted to a Mosque when the Ottomans took Istanbul. Inside, you can see Muslim as well as Christian art and imagery. It is now a museum, and isn’t used for active worship anymore.

A painting from when the Hagia Sofya was a cathedral… under restoration when we were there.

This small staircase is a feature of Mosques… the Imam gives speeches from here, and climbs up the stairs to make his points as he speaks.

A cross carved into the Marble floor… clues to the Hagia Sofya’s past as a cathedral.

There was a big display of Arabic calligraphy inside as well… I thought these were so cool.

More calligraphy

Street cats, inside the museum!

Folks hanging out at the foot-wash, outside another Mosque in Istanbul

Inside the Basilica Cistern… an amazing and very old public health innovation! Built during the 6th century, the emperor realized that if Istanbul was going to be attacked, its citizens would need a source of safe water if they would survive. The cistern is 500 ft underground, and is supported by a bunch of columns that were basically leftovers from building a Basilica a few centuries earlier. You can tell, because none of the columns match… they’re all different.

At one point, the whole cistern was filled with mud, and then it was dug out and protected as a museum after that. There are fish swimming around in the water now, not sure you’d want to drink it.

Upside-down medusa head…. a couple of the columns used to support the cistern had medusas on them, but they installed them upside down, apparently.

Last day with Cora 😦

Delicious pastries!

Last trip to the turkish delight store for Cora

A wedding going on on Istiklal St., on May 31st which was the anniversary of the riots in this area last year.

An anti-anti-government protest parade. I had to get off the tram a few stops before my hotel, because the city shut down all access to the area where the memorial/protest would be. I walked and talked with a guy on the same train who was walking in my same direction… he explained to me that this parade was made of Islamist government supporters, who were “trying to use the completely unrelated plight for Palestinian autonomy to get support for suppressing the protesters/memorial-goers.”

More of the anti-anti-government parade… the people in the parade were chanting in Arabic.

Istanbul mobilized about 10,000 police to keep protesters from occupying Taksim Square and Istiklal street. I had already dropped Cora off at the airport by this time, and I had to go back to our hotel, pick up my bags, and move them to my hostel. I hadn’t planned to have to cross a police barricade with all my bags, on foot, but they let me through. As I was walking down the completely empty street, my throat started to burn, but not like it burns when you cook chilies in your kitchen. A little different. I figured it must be tear gas from about 1km away… can’t imagine how awful it must’ve been for the people at the center of it.

Finally reached my hostel…. Red River Hostel was nice, quiet and the owner Fevzi was really helpful.

The next morning I went walking down Istiklal just to see if there was anything to be seen from the night before. looked like a normal rainy day… all the cops and barracades were gone. And, turns out you can in fact find turkish coffee at Starbucks in Turkey.

Walking toward Istiklal from my Hostel

Roasted chestnuts… these little stands were everywhere, and the chestnuts were tasty.

Walking around Sultanahmet… Carpet shop

Enjoying some Gulluoglu Baklava with some new Cornell friends! My friend Soraya put Ariane and her boyfriend Demirhan in touch with me, and it was great to meet them.

Demirhan and Ariane… Turns out we all overlapped at Cornell but didn’t know each other… Demirhan was a PhD student when I was an undergrad. Ariane was an architecture student ,so it was super fun to walk around Istanbul and learn about the mosques and arcitechture from her.

Let’s put all of the random extra tiles… Here! Awesome tile wall at a mosque near the Eminonu marina.

Close up of the mosque wall

More tiles

They provided Mosque-appropriate clothing for the uninitiated!

Arabic numerals on a clock in the mosque. Maybe appropriately, this clock is the last photo in my album…?! Time for this incredible trip to end….

And… that’s it…?! I packed my bags, picked up my bike from Hotel Torun and got on a plane. I would love to go back to Turkey, to see more of Istanbul and more of the country… I didn’t make it to the east or south coast at all, which I’ve heard are amazing and more than worth the trip out of the city.

As a closing to the entire trip, I have an epilogue that I want to write, to give some final thoughts and reflections on the trip as a whole.  Once I got back to Seattle, it was so good to see Ed and my friends, but we had to pack up our entire lives in less than three weeks in order to move to yet another new place (Atlanta) for an amazing job (that I’m really grateful to have). I definitely felt like I wasn’t quite my old self when I got back, and had a hard time adjusting to making group decisions and living with another person. Poor Ed, he’s a saint for putting up with this “readjustment”!

Even though I’m back, and we’ve moved into a new place in Atlanta, I still feel like I’m on the move, and not really in a permanent home just yet.  Because of all the chaos with moving, I haven’t been able to devote much time and space to thinking, talking and reflecting on the trip, and I’m getting a little worried that that chance will slip away the more time that goes by.  It really helped to talk with another recently-returned fellow back in Seattle… nice to share the “What the hell just happened to me?!” sentiment with someone who’s been there.

More later, hopefully with a better answer to that question, and any others I come up with in the meantime!  Until then, I want to end this post with a lot of thanks, to a lot of people.

I want to thank David Bonderman, Helene Obradovich and Marilyn Gray at UW for the idea, funding and operations that have made this amazing opportunity a reality for so many of us. I still can hardly believe it even exists, and I just lived it.  I’m so, so grateful to Ed for holding down the fort, caring for all the animals, Skying with me and visiting me over the last 8 months… there’s a lot back home I didn’t have to worry about, and that made this journey even more of dream-come-true.  Thanks to my family who were excited for me, kept in touch, and didn’t let on too much how scared they were that I’d get kidnapped.  Thanks to friends who would check in every so often… it was really nice to know I wasn’t totally forgotten back home!  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my colleagues at ISB too… Nitin, Elisabeth, and Nic, who took the lead on resubmitting our manuscript after I left and couldn’t lead the effort myself.  I’m lucky to have worked with such an amazing team… it’s pretty rare to have a paper gone so quickly, and it’s all thanks to these guys.  Finally, I want to thank all of the people I’ve met, many of whom were introduced in this blog… the people who welcomed me into their homes, into their hotels and restaurants (even with my bike!), and everybody who took the time to chat or answer probably-stupid questions in a bad rendition of their language.  Throughout the trip, I’ve had the sense that the world opened up and gave me a big hug, and it’s thanks to the collective of new friends and acquaintances I had the privilege of meeting, for giving me that.  I have a brand new sense of what it means to be a host and friend to someone far from home, and I look forward to paying the gift forward.

 

Tales from the land of perpetual Mo’vember

I’m sort of embarrassed to admit that one of the first major things I noticed about south India is that the vast majority of men have mustaches. I flew into Bangalore from Bangkok, and during my usual first-day-errands, I hardly saw a shorn upper lip. The guys at my hotel, the guys who drive the auto rickshaws, the guys working at the street food stalls and restaurants…. nearly all of em, uniformly mustachioed with the same fuzzy caterpillar. Although it was April, it looked like Seattle in November, where lots of dudes grow the Mo’vember ‘stache to raise awareness for prostate cancer and other men’s health issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movember.

The younger guys at the Airtel store were an exception, I noticed, while selling my soul for a couple of SIM cards. After a month in big cities and small towns across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, mustaches seemed to be positively associated with age and rural-ness, and negatively associated with socioeconomic status. Note though that variables like profession, religion, caste and access to shaving materials were not properly controlled for.

But anyhow! Facial hair style commentary aside, the plan after arriving was to spend two or three days in Bangalore, bus to Mysore, and then start biking. I planned to go from Mysore (3 hrs west of Bangalore, by bus) to the Coorg and Nilgiris regions of the Western Ghat mountains. (You can see the actual route here… move the map over to south India and zoom in: https://share.delorme.com/beeronabike) In other words, Operation: heat escape! Before heading out of the city, I did my usual bike assembly, SIM card and cash acquisition, and I bought a few cotton t-shirts. My synthetic biking shirts are just too hot for this climate, and I learned quickly that the sleeves were a bit too short and the necklines a bit too low!  Harsha, a nice guy I met on warmshowers.org, stored my bike box in Bangalore while I was out riding.

Before leaving for Mysore, I got a great intro to Bangalore and Karnataka state from Vijay, who is a colleague of my friend and my dad’s SO, Diana. Vijay is a project manager and developer for a number of web apps made for American companies, and It was great to meet him along with his wife Ajita and their two daughters. They gave me some good recommendations for places to visit along my ride, and Vijay even let me stay at his vacation flat in Mysore.

I spent two days exploring Mysore on my bike, including a bird sanctuary (with crocodiles!), the grand Mysore palace (Mysore used to be the capital of Karnataka, before it moved to Bangalore), and the big Devaraja food and flower market. I also had my second flat tire of the trip, but this time I wasn’t alone on the side of an Amazon highway. Turns out flat tires are a good way to make friends. Here’s an album from the first few days in India.

Shady streets in Bangalore…. it’s known as the Garden City and for me it was a relief to have a cool breeze and big trees. People who live there will all tell you that it’s terrible now, and that there used to be so many more trees. Sad, but I was still happy to have the leftover shade!

Dear god, the honking…. this took a long time to get used to. Like more noise is going to make the red light turn faster, huh people? Here was one perhaps feeble attempt to make people reconsider that next beep

Dinner with Vijay and Ajitha at their condo in Bangalore…. they gave me a ton of great ideas for things to see on my ride. Vijay was one of the first few non-mustachioed guys I met.

The 12 km bikeride to the bus station, to get me to Mysore. Most of the ride was chaos shaded by the elevated freeway…. again, loving being out of the sun!!

Universal truth: anything may be carried on the back of a motorbike

Another flat tire , a few km after arriving in Mysore. Again, it wasn’t a puncture but a valve stem failure on one of those thick puncture resistant tubes. Don’t buy these!! I found the flat when I pulled into a tire store to fill up with air. I walked the bike out of the way to change the flat, but this gang wanted to help. Fine with me!

More shady streets in Mysore.

Angry kid with huge load of branches. I don’t know what he was yelling about, but it was hilarious…. I think maybe he wanted me to buy one of his branches? If I could find this little guy again in 10 years, I would bet that he’ll have a mustache by then.

basket weaving

Around Mysore

I rode about 20 km out of town to reach the Ranganthittu bird sanctuary… passed this group on the way

Bird sanctuary boat tour

Croc!

Painted storks

Feeling left out of the mustache club. The third guy, taking the picture, also had a mustache for the record.

Lonely bike without its rider, seen on the way out of the Rangantthitu bird sanctuary

Colorful paints/dyes at the big central market in Mysore

Flower rainbows at the market

It took me a long time before I could pass by a dress shop like this without stopping to stare for awhile. So pretty!!

The first part of the bike route took me 3 days to reach the hill town of Madikeri in the Coorg region, a low-mountain area (600-1000 m) famous for coffee and pork curries. Coorg women also have a unique way of wrapping their sarees, and a different flavor of Hinduism is practiced here (a larger emphasis on worship of nature and animals as I understand it).

Some broad comments on my first week in India…
India has definitely been the most culture-shocking place for me, of the whole trip so far. It took me awhile to begin to explain it, and I’m not sure I can even articulate it very well now. People interacted with me differently than anywhere else, and the traffic and noise were especially jarring as I got going on my bike. I had to be really assertive, sometimes bordering aggressive, to get questions answered or protest an obvious attempt to price gouge me. And it always wigged me out when I’d smile at someone and they wouldn’t smile back, especially kids. When you don’t speak the same language, your face and hands are about all you’ve got left…. and it was hard finding a lot of apparently unhappy faces! After about a week though, I was finally used to this and realized that it’s just the way they roll here, and isn’t personal in the least. I started making especially goofy grins, just to try to get a rise out of the people I’d see along the road while cycling.

A few words and a story about price hikes for foreigners…
This is done a bit differently in India as well. In the other places I’ve been, either I didn’t realize I was being gouged (because I felt the price was fair from the start and I don’t like haggling for sport), or people would appeal to my sense of pity and compassion. In Cambodia for example, I was bartering for a shirt, and a woman said sadly, “Less than $3.50, no profit.” How can you take the woman’s profit?!! So I’m used to a certain set of sales techniques.

In India though, there were few appeals to pity, compassion or other feelings that make you more likely to open your wallet. Maybe I just look like I have a black heart or something, but I always knew, immediately, that I would be paying a higher price. And I would be bullied into it if I weren’t ready to stick up for myself. For example, the guy who tried to bully me into paying $10 instead of the usual $5 to put myself and my bike on a bus. I’ll tell the detailed story sometime over beers, but suffice it to say a small scene was made.

So I got used to being on guard…. ready to defend myself when paying for things, ready to assert myself when I got ignored by the bus conductors, and ready to slap the hotel porter who tried to sneak a handful of spandex.

I felt safer and saved a little money this way, but I didn’t like this guarded person very much. I especially didn’t like this asshole one day when I had to pee at the bus station. Big sign above the bathroom door said “Pay Toilet: 2 Rupees.” I gave the attendant 10 Rupees, but she said “5 Rupees” and handed me only 5 in change when I expected 8. Was there a math confusion here? I asked for the other 3 Rupees change, and she says “No, 5 Rupees.” Wow, that’s balls…. Charging me over 200% of what the sign clearly said.

This of course infuriated my battle-ready self, and I couldn’t see through to the fact that her balls-out sales technique was just trying to meet the same end as the “no profit” lady in Cambodia. She just wanted a little extra money, like you, me and 8 billion of our friends. But I got frustrated, pointed to the sign, and asked again in exasperation for my 3 Rupees. Ultimately, she gave me my change. I walked away feeling relieved to have peed for the correct price, and victorious in the Karlyn vs. India arena of self-preservation.

So I “won” my 3 Rupees (less than 10 cents) in a “battle” against a poor, old woman whose job was to collect money in front of the pay toilet at the bus station. WHO AM I?! If that’s not a black heart, I don’t know what is.

I didn’t like this battle-hardened version of myself at all, and I was shocked that I did not see this for what it was, in the moment. Although it felt like yet another extortionist attack, this was clearly CLEARLY not a battle worth fighting, and there should have been no question about walking away having paid 5 Rupees and not 2.

So, for the rest of my time in India, I tried to keep the Wolverine claws under wraps a little better. And I carried a little more small change, for cripe sake.

The ride from Mysore to Madikeri started here…. it was nice to be off a main road and experience India without traffic for awhile

All three of us started at one another as we initially passed each other going in opposite directions. I stopped and went back to say hi, and to ask if I could take a pic of them with their cool water-toting bike.

The girl, Hama, (who I found out is actually the same age as me) wanted to show her mom the pic on the camera, so I walked my bike back to their house. She had a cute puppy too!! Hama, her dad and her mom Lakshmi invited me in for a roti… they didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Kannada but we had a good time.

Hama’s brother…. showed me their spinach field and cut me a coconut too.

We walked farther through the fields (by this time I had been hanging out with their family for over an hour…. I got to meet tons of people!) and met these friends (or maybe family?)

I noticed that the guy and I were both missing chunks of our right thumbs…. crazy! He wins for having the more gnarly stump though for sure. After walking all around the fields and meeting at least 5 other people, I had to keep biking. But this single stop reminded me why I bike through these places. All my grumbling about the heat and boredom melted away right there.

There’s a little hand and a sliver of a face in the window if you look closely….

Another biker on the way to Madikeri, this is probably somewhere outside of Hunsur.

Buddhist temple in Bylakuppe. There are a few Tibetan refugee settlements in south India and I visited the temple in one of the largest.

At the Tibetan Buddhist temple, I met a physician (Vijay), his wife (Prabha) and his mother who all live in Atlanta. Crazy coincidence!! We walked around together for awhile and exchanged info so we could get together when I move down there. Serendipitously, we were also able to get together again when I got back to Bangalore.

Monks coming to prayer

A delicious street snack called pani poori. It’s a hard puffed shell filled with a masala broth with onions, tomatoes and lentils.

Gobi Manchuri maker…. fried spicy cauliflower

The sidewalk in Kushalnagar was made of these cement planks, and sometimes a few would be missing. Keeps you on your toes. Many sidewalks I saw from here out were made of this stuff, with similar deadly holes.

Stopped for a chai on the way up the hill to Madikeri

In Madikeri, I stayed at a homestay and this family was in the room next door. I don’t remember everyone’s names, but Pooja is next to me in the blue, and is about to find out where she got into college. We went together to a lookout point called Raja’s seat.

The South Indian food at the Anamiiva homestay was delicious…. Poonamma gets all the credit! Thankfully they gave me a spoon since I suck pretty bad at eating liquids by hand ((which is how they roll here…. takes lots of rice to soak it up).

Talakaveri shrine…. the source of the Kaveri river. This is a holy place for Hindus, especially Coorgs (people from Coorg area where this was taken)

Talakaveri

hehehe

Photoshoot in the car… Pooja’s family was nice enough to let me cram into their car for the Talakaveri visit.

Back at the homestay, Suhan and Sumana (daughters of the owners) showed me how to play carom. They schooled me of course but it was fun.

Suhan sang with a choir and showed me her music…. I had never seen the notation for indian, atonal music before. So cool…. they don’t use musical notes at all. The top line tells the relative pitch using symbols (I think). It’s hard since I can’t tell the difference between the text and the music symbols…. but when she explained it I was blown away.

Another delicious meal…. I even tried the Coorg pork which is a specialty there.

Heading out from the homestay early in the morning, to get a bus a few hundred km to Ooty.

It was nice to spend two days in Madikeri with the Bheemaiah family at Anamiiva homestay. The homestay system in India is really cool, and unique among the places I’ve been so far. You’re in someone’s house, but it’s more structured than, say, couchsurfing.com. There’s a set price, so you don’t have that awkward “How do I say thank you for this….” discussion in your head.

From Madikeri, I took a bus to the mountain town of Ooty (Short for “Ootacamund,” which is the anglicized version of “Udhagamandalam”). After so many hot, highway miles in SE Asia, I had no qualms about skipping over the potentially crummy places in between the areas I wanted to ride. And it was so worth it….the Nilgiris mountains with their tea estates and purple flowering trees made some of the best cycling in this entire trip. It was chilly but sunny, the roads were good, and traffic seemed a little less intense. I biked 25 km out from Ooty to the Pallaniappa tea plantation and stayed for two days…. I was the only guest at the time, and $20/night paid for the room, all meals, and some good company on a hike around the plantation. I also visited a factory where the young tea leaves are made into black tea…. picture captions describe the process.

The view from my window in Ooty…. it was nice and chilly there too, 2000m elevation or more!

Research institute near my hotel in Ooty

My hotel seemed to be a popular place for big group vacations. I met these ladies and their husbands…. their husbands were all friends from grad school, PhDs in Linguistics…. they were all getting together for a long weekend and invited me to eat dinner w/ them. Super fun!

Market along the ride to the Pallaniappa tea estate

Beautiful ride through tea country…. these trees were blooming all along the road.

Some guys hanging out on the route to Pallaniappa

The pavement was just ending right before I reached the tea plantation

My room is the one on the end…. I was the only one in the whole place! Behind the row-rooms is a kitchen…. a cool guy named Krishna cooked for me while I was there.

Relaxing for a bit after arriving at Pallaniappa…. April was election month in India so I tried to learn a little indian politics

“Green Leaf”…. only the top two youngest leaves and the bud are picked for tea.

Subramanian took me on a hike around the estate

A vegetable garden, cordoned off with sari cloth

This woman literally popped up from a tea hedge, holding this flower….. I was startled but she was really pretty in all the green tea. The tea shouldn’t have a chance to flower if all the green leaf is being picked…. so it was neat to see what tea flowers actually look like.

The top of our hike…. we started at 6am and got up here around 8.

Subramanian taking my bike for a spin

Bison (or guar) are a big problem in the tea fields because they trample it.

I asked to visit a factory nearby where the green leaf goes to be made into tea. The whole process is really quick, only a couple of hours.

The factory manager at the controls! The factory wasn’t processing tea that day, but he turned all the machines on to show me how they worked. Don’t tell OSHA.

First, the green leaf is “withered” to about 45% total moisture. It is spread on these belts where warm air blows for about 3 hours. The leaves are left with a leathery texture.

The withered leaves are dumped through this hole in the floor….

…and arrive in the top chute of this machine, which rolls them. When you see large-leaf black tea (called Orange Pekoe), you probably notice it looks twisty. This is why.

Then the twisted leaves go into this screen barrel which separates rolled the leaves by size.

Fermentation happens on these boards, but only for about 20 min. Basically the rolled leaves turn from green to brown as plant enzymes and microbes are allowed to break down the sugars and fibers.

Then, the withered, fermented leaves are dried in an over for about half an hour, and separated again by size in these machines. Each of these sacks has a different size of tea leaf, from tiny dust, up to the full-sized orange pekoe.

Four of the different size classes of black tea.

Each size class has a different name, shortened to an acronym which I won’t be able to remember. Anything “OP” means orange peakoe, and is the highest grade. Smaller particles are lower grade teas.

Tea factory record keeping system

Green leaf is harvested either by hand, by scissors with a box attached (as in this pic) or by machine. Hand picked teas are the best quality, since fewer of the older tougher leaves are accidentally included. Employees at the plantation are provided with housing, water and cooking/heating fuel on site in addition to their salary. I learned this from the english-speaking managers and owners. I wished I could have also spoken with one of these women to ask how she felt about it. I was curious because I also learned that the estates can’t keep enough workers to pick all the tea, despite having what I’m told is a sweet compensation/housing deal.

Ashwin, the son of the estate owner, and his wife Aishwariya. Aishwariya was trained as an engineer but quit when she got married to run the hospitality part of the tea estate. She said she loves it and has no regrets. Both were really kind, and answered tons tea questions for me!

Cup of tea while I switch out my fat back tire for the skinnier one. I had put this bigger one on in Colombia for the bad road sections, even though it was a little too big to work with my fender. I’d been sticking to fine roads here, so I decided to put the smaller tire back on since I was worried the bigger tire was rubbing too much on the fender and frame.

Stopping at a different tea estate just to buy some handmade tea (i.e. no factory…. withering, fermenting, drying, size separation by hand). This was on my ride out from Pallaniappa to the city of Coimbatore.

Flowers…. these shops smelled amazing like jasmine

Windy road down the mountain…. just to give an idea of how little space there was!

After leaving the Pallaniappa tea estate, I biked a few more days to the city of Coimbatore, and then decided to return to Ooty and then Mysore by bike. This route gave me a few more days of cool mountain air, and the chance to bike through two national tiger reserve parks. In Mysore, I had a place to stay (thanks to Vijay) where I could cook for myself, do laundry, and visit parts of the city I missed the first time around.

 

There are a million awesome places to go in India, but I decided to spend all of my last two weeks in India in an apartment in Bangalore. I didn’t take a trip out to the Goa beaches, and I didn’t bike along the southern coast like I had considered. “Why?” and “Why not??” are good questions! Sometimes I wondered myself….

But, the truth is I got tired of traveling and spending time on logistics. It had been awhile since I stayed put in any one place for more than a couple days…. the last time was late February, when I was getting ready to leave the Philippines. And, traveling with a combination of bike, bus and train in India requires much, much more advanced planning than I have had to do so far. Trains are booked solid months in advance, so these were not really an option for me. Only two types of busses had space for a bicycle, so my usual fail-safe strategy of “show up, get on bus” wasn’t so great anymore. Advanced research was also needed for hotel-finding, if only to avoid parading around in my bike shorts looking for a place to stay.

And guys, it turns out Bangalore is Awesome! Before my trip, my impression of Bangalore was “that place where the people who answer tech support phonecalls work.” And while there are lots of call centers in B’lore, the rest of the city is pretty cool and I had a good time “living” there for a couple weeks. The city has tons of trees and shade, and I stayed in a part of town where I could walk to several microbreweries. So for two weeks, I explored the city, tried out new restaurants and street food every day, and went out with new friends like it was one big perpetual weekend.

More stories from Bangalore are in the photo captions, but I want to thank some really kind, generous and fun people here in the main text for spending time with me and showing me their city. Cheers to Harsha Majety, Vijay and Ajita Prabhakar, Keerthi Rao, Maija Pilkkonen, Veena Raghunandan, Manoj Payardha, Vijay Varma and his cousins Ramesh and Rama, Uma Shankar, and Venky Shivarama from WheelSports.

Walking up the 1,000 steps to the Chamundi hill temple in Mysore

Chamundi hill

Offering baskets for sale near the Chamundi temple

Shame on me and my little panniers

Back in Bangalore…. all the little girls have these cute pixies!

My friend Sharmila’s mom lives in Bangalore and she took me to her tailor to get some pants hemmed. I bought them custom in bangkok but they weren’t quite right by the time I had to leave.

Commercial st., Bangalore

THIS is what’s under saris?? Hot damn!!

More commercial st.

Cubbon park trash cans

Cubbon park…. so many trees in bloom, and it was clean! There is a lot of litter, just about everywhere I traveled in India, but the parks in Bangalore were kept really clean.

I think these are called mayflower trees.

Outside the park…. ok to throw trash on the ground again.

My home for 2 weeks, in the Indiranagar neighborhood, which had several seattle-like qualities

…Including a food truck, 3 breweries, one starbucks, and lots of other little cafes.

Toit brew pub, walking distance from my strategically-chosen serviced apartment in Bangalore. This was a nice hefeweisen.

A salad bar!! Probably not the healthiest decision I’ve made on this trip, but I couldn’t resist. Ate here 3 times at least, and didn’t have any issues within a plausible incubation time of consuming the goods….

Coconut man and his dog

Lame picture of the Bangalore palace, bc I refused to buy at $10 ticket just to take pics of the outside. And, the guard wouldn’t take my bribe.

Veena volunteers as a teacher with an NGO called Ashwini center. This group provides after-school education, extra lessons, supplemental food and college prep help for selected kids from Bangalore’s squatter settlements. They support each student until they finish college and find jobs…. the center has been around long enough that its very first students have just finished college. I got to meet two of them…. really inspiring.

Math is hard!

Veena and three of her students at Ashwini

Remember Vijay from Atlanta who I met at the golden temple?? He was staying with his cousin (Rama, in the picture) and Ramesh so we got together for lunch. They invited me to spend the day at their house…. Ramesh is a civil engineer and hs firm did the design work for the condo complex where he lives.

Vijay’s mom showing us how to make those long strings of flowers that women wear in their hair here.

Chicken store around the corner from my apt in Bangalore

Autos

I loved the upholstery inside the autorickshaws…. each one was different. This one was especially cool.

Saw this T-shirt…. it’s funny if you’ve seen Russell Peters’ standup comedy. Youtube it if you haven’t…. he’s Indian-Canadian and does a hilarious impression of his dad

In Lalbagh park in Bangalore…. NO GAMES.

Lalbagh monkeys waiting for bananas

A girl from Kerala who I met in the park

Big British-style glass house where they hold a huge flower show twice a year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going when I was there.

Bonsai!! Cool bonsai garden at Lalbagh…. I used to love these things. I had one once that I bought at a mall kiosk…. it died pretty quickly.

More bonsai

These monkey guys were all around the park

Kids selling flowers in the blue bowl

Maija from Finland and Keerthi from Bangalore…. Maija is living with Keerthi for several months while she volunteers at a youth program in Bangalore. I met them both on the Tiger park jeep safari back near Ooty, and we hung out a bunch when I got back to Bangalore

Keerthi and her mom in the kitchen, making magic

The magic…. beet salad, channa masala, roti, buttermilk, and these sweet minced carrots for dessert

Maija, Manoj and me at an open bar event put on by the Bangalore Expat Club. Manoj and a few other local Bangaloreans interloped…. it was an ok party, lots of study abroad students getting drunk. Siiigh, I felt old!

Roadside buttermilk sales

Indian bakery… I swear I only went here to take a picture

ok 2 pictures.

Nighttime street food crawl in VV Puram neighborhood in B’lore.

Juice bar

The cows are in on the crawl too

Fellow street food tourist pal, Shankar

Last lunch with Vijay P…. hoping he comes to MN soon for a reunion!

Cool elephant door handle at a Kerala restauant

Visiting Veena at her house once more before I left…. so sad to leave after meeting such nice folks.

Venky is a friend who runs a few bike shops in Bangalore called Wheel Sports. I meet him through Jacky, the cyclist who works at ProBike in Bangkok. If you’re in Bangalore looking for anything bike-related, here’s your guy…. he did me the huge favor of a ride to the airport with my giant box.

Now, I’m rested and ready for some adventure in Turkey, which is my last stop before this whole shenanigan comes to an end. I have mixed feelings about the end of Bonderman, but right now I’m psyched to be in Istanbul, about to take a 125cc scooter down to the coast. It’s not over til it’s over!

 

 

 

 

Elephants, sticky rice and tent cities, oh my!

My route through Thailand from the Cambodian border to Bangkok took me through the eastern part of the country. And, if you look at a map, it probably seems like I was trying hard to avoid all the usual destinations! (Phuket, Ko samui, Chiang Mai….). I saw some amazing things though, especially at Khao Yai National Park (Elephants and Gibbons!! read on!). I made some great new friends, and got to reconnect with a friend from Cornell who I hadn’t seen in almost 10 years.

Here are a few photo sets from the ride…. I came through the Poipet-Aranyaprathet border crossing and went east to Sa Kaeo, north through Khao Yai national park, up to Lopburi, and then back down the main corridor through Ayutthaya to Bangkok.

My first night in Thailand was set up to be another round of the usual routine…. arrive early afternoon, look for a hotel and some food, shower, wash stinky bike clothes in the sink, wander around town to find dinner, and go to bed…. ready to wake up at 5am to do the same thing again the next day. I nearly completed this sequence in Aranyaprathet, when during the “wander around” phase, someone noticed I was struggling to figure out what was cooking in a pot at a street stall. She spoke English, and helped me order, and then invited me to sit with her and her mom to eat. Her name is Suteera, but she goes by Sushi (which happens to be her favorite food :). I ended up staying two nights in Aran since I wasn’t feeling very well, so that meant I got to hang out with these fine ladies a second time.

My hotel in Aranyaprathet…. it had a swimming pool for guests!!! Perfect thing after biking across the border in the heat.

Sushi and her mom in the jewelery store they own. Sushi’s boyfriend and brother live in Bangkok, but she’s expected to stay and take on the family business. She didn’t seem super thrilled about this, but was happy to be able to spend the time with her mom.

Street market photo

One of the stops on my food tour with Sushi and her mom…. this is a chinese dessert of tofu and puffed rice things, swimming in a steeped ginger broth. Delicious and spicy!

Bugs n’ frogs…. Not sure what’s in the spray bottle tho…

Pad thai and the “best satay in Aran.” Apparently the satay man has been perfecting his product for 30 years! Ignore the helmet hair…. :))

I left Aran feeling better, and ready for the ride to Khao Yai park, which would take about 4 days. Some of that time was nice, some of it was boring highway. I spent my 30th birthday at a random highway hotel, alone on a day when the government banned alcohol sales for an upcoming election. Major fail, Thailand!! But, I found a nice restaurant and had some chocolate cake and a diet coke! Road stories are in the picture captions, including a nearly-abandoned set of cottages that saved my ass when I was looking for a place to stay near the park entrance.

Awake with the monks at 6:30am…. just leaving Aranyaprathet on my bike. Poor guys and their bare feet! This was day 1 of about 4, making my way to Khao Yai National Park.

Often, road signs are the highlights of my rides. This was one of about 100 signs that said “STEAK.” Curry puff sounded good, but I didn’t stop.

Thai busstop

Often there is a series of vendors all selling the same things along the road. I play this game where I try to guess what the things are, and if I can’t, I’ll stop and try one. These stumped me for sure. It was sticky rice stuffed inside a sugar cane stalk and steamed in there. There was a little “cap” of wood wrapped in banana leaf on top, to keep the moisture in. That threw me off.

Birthday lunch! Papaya salad and pork (I think…). It was waaayy too spicy, but delicious so I ate it anyway! I didn’t end up eating the pork since it was all fatty pieces and honestly I thought it was chicken when I ordered it before they cut if up. You must assume these risks when ordering street food.

These trees were blooming all along the roads…. I learned later that people plant them in honor of the King.

“Vote for me, I have a PhD!” Haha, not sure that’s a good idea!?? There were lots of political signs as it was election season.

Some craft stalls on a nice road once I got off the busy road.

My plan was to find a place to stay just outside Khao Yai, before starting the climb up to the top. My GPS said there was one place close to the entrance, called “Moon River.” If it didn’t exist, I’d have to backtrack 10 km or more to find something else. Luckily, I spotted this sign! I followed the dirt road, and there was no sign of activity.

The Moon River property was clearly a place to host guests…. there were lots of these little cottages. I rode around, calling “Sawadee?”, and then I saw a woman who had been sleeping in a garage on the other side of the property. She didn’t speak English, but I managed to communicate that I was looking for a place to stay. So she called her sister (the owner) in Bangkok, who spoke some English and everything worked great. I got to stay in this little cottage, with hot water, AC and a small kitchen!

Moon River was a long way from any civilization though, so the owner’s sister let me use her scooter to go to the market for some dinner if I would fill it with gas. No problem!

The next morning, I started the climb into the park! 40km up to the top where I had booked a park cottage.

The road through Khao Yai is 60 km long, and after leaving Moon River, I biked 40 km into the mountains to the lodge I had booked inside the park. It was so nice to escape the heat, even though it was a hard climb to get there! I had booked a room in a hostel-like lodge in the park, and it was great because my neighbors at the lodge were bike people too. They were a Thai family, and the dad Jacky works for the largest Trek distributor in Thailand. It’s called Probike, located in Bangkok. We exchanged info, and I planned to visit him again for a tuneup and to buy a cardboard bike box in Bangkok. I stayed in the park one night, and then rode down out of the park and stayed at a lodge about 20km outside, which offered guided park tours and visits to a nearby bat cave. THE BAT CAVE. I am so glad I took the tour…. I would’ve left the park without seeing much of the wildlife at all if I’d skipped it!

Once I entered the park, there were a few offshoot trails out to see waterfalls or other lookout points. This one I tried to bike to, but then there were stairs later on…. oops!

Aha, I am totally gonna see an elephant today!

Definitely evidence of elephant.

Pretty pond, up at the top. No elephants here though.

I imagined elephants standing here, really hard.

Looks sort of like US National parks, doesn’t it? This is the house where i stayed in the park. Booking this house was an accomplishment in itself…. I had to figure out the online reservation system (using a series of blogs and Thai websites) and then had to physically visit a branch of the bank where the Thai national park service has its account. I was to transfer about $15 into the account. This took about half an hour and 6 people at the bank, who had to call the park service to figure out what was going on…. turns out I was supposed to print something out which I didn’t do in advance. All was well though, the park people faxed my document to the bank people who were then able to complete the transfer. Now I understand why I saw so many hotels and guest houses OUTSIDE the park, after I left!

No elephants my first day, so I went out with my bike and my headlamp to do some night spotting of critters. Saw this blindsnake…. cool!

Exotic thai porcupine

Cool moth… I saw this guy b/c its little eyes were glowing bright orange with my headlamp. A good bright headlamp is worth sooo much…. I have the PrincetonTec Apex II, highly recommended.

Cool Thai moth.

Early morning mist, just starting my ride out of the park. Today, there must be elephants.

I was being ware (bewaring?) for Guars too, but didn’t see any.

What are you staring at.

Funny thai versions of familiar junk food. Didn’t actually try these so I can’t tell how delicious they were.

I biked out of the park, and stayed at place 15km outside the park, called Greenleaf Guesthouse. The people were nice, they had a good restaurant, rooms were cheap, and they led cave tours and hikes/drives in the park. I went on the afternoon cave trip and was planning to leave the next day. The cave trip was so cool though, that I stayed for the park visit the next day too. This is a tarantula living in the cave we visited.

I think this was called a spider scorpion…. anyhow, it was a gnarly arachnid.

Centipede love

Sparkly temple we saw on the drive from the cave to the field where we waited to see the mass bat exodus…

This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen…. my first murmuration! See that fuzzy black line across the sky, above the red sky? Those are bats! There are about 3 million of them, and they leave the cave to find food every night around sunset. It takes over an hour for 3 million bats to leave the cave. Our guide had calculated the average bats per second…. I think it was 50-something. So amazing. I have a video of this too, but I’m sure if you look up “Khao Yai bat cave” on youtube you can see it.

Red headed lantern flies… definitely the wildest looking hemipterans I’ve ever seen!

Taking a break to put on our leech socks for the hike through Khao Yai.

Gibbons grooming… our guide had a cool telescope and it worked to hold my camera up to it.

And from wildlife back to humans…

green snake, don’t know what…

Great hornbill

Flower of a ginger plant

These are actualy insects! Not moss, not a plant virus… they walked along the branch, and if you touch their little hairs, they come off in a bit of white dust in your fingers.

Scorpion, not the most poisonous one in Thailand.

So we were driving through the park (6 of us foreigners in the back of a covered pickup truck) and all of a sudden we pulled a U turn and started going really fast… this was why!!! FINALLY!! The guide had gotten a phonecall from a park ranger telling us that a male was crossing the road.

We visited this waterfall in the park after the Elephant alert.

As we were driving out of the park, back to the guest house, someone spotted a really big butt.

We pulled over and waited.. we were the only ones on the road at this point. We couldn’t believe it.. TWO elephants in one day! It was another male, just hanging in the brush, eating… we waited 15 min or so and then he decided to cross the street, right behind our truck. So exciting.

Guardrails… aint no thang.

After the park, I made up a route to Bangkok that took me through Lopburi and Ayutthaya, both former Thai capitals. Navigation was fun because Thai roads are so awesome… even the small ones are well paved. I’d play a game where I had to reach the next town on the smallest roads possible, without getting stuck in mud pits or non-existant roads (GPSs are good for this). Super fun, and it made the hot kilometers tick by really fast compared to the slog through Cambodia.

Lopburi is a small town known for the monkeys that run around the streets. I didn’t spend much time here, but it had a few nice wats and Angkor-style temple ruins. And there were monkeys, all over. Sadly, the most salient memory I have from this town is witnessing a horrible display of domestic violence, in broad daylight. A lesbian couple was arguing across the street, and one (very large) woman stood over her partner and was beating her on the head and face repeatedly, and yelling really loudly. A little boy was with them.

There were people all around, but no one seemed to pay any attention. I stood and watched with bystander paralysis, incredulous that this was actually happening right next to me. I didn’t know what to do (How do you call the cops in Thailand?!!), and I don’t speak Thai, but this needed to stop. I just walked closer to them and stared at the big lady, with all the firey eye-daggers I could muster…. I pointed at her face (still 6 feet away or more) and said “Go”…. she looked at me and started yelling something in Thai, but stopped beating her girlfriend for a moment so that was ok. They had been traveling together on a motorbike pulling a flat trailer, and eventually the big lady got on the bike and they left together, the smaller woman and little boy in the trailer.

I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, for a number of reasons, but at that moment nothing mattered except that a person was getting punched in the head. I didn’t know them or their story, but there’s no justification in the world for what I saw to continue. So that’s why I got all up in their business. After they left, I walked into a park and couldn’t help but start to cry. A few street vendors who had seen the episode came over and gave me a bottle of water, and they called over a lady who speaks English to talk with me about it.

I don’t know what was worse, seeing the woman get beaten, or what this “interpreter” told me. Basically she said, “Oh, they’re lesbians and they do this every day. It wasn’t a guy beating her, don’t worry. They’ll go home and make love and everything will be fine. She was yelling at you to mind your own business.”

This made me feel ill, and it was all I could do to keep from crying more, or opening a very large can of human-rights-flavored worms in limited English. I thanked her for talking with me about it, bought a consolation bubble tea, and walked back to my hotel.

Heading out of Khao Yai on my bike… I made up a scenic route to keep off the big highways. Lots of harvested cassava along the road… these are the stalks, the starchy roots were already cut off.

Colorful Naga at a small temple

A little time in the dirt… no problems for my non MTB!

A fellow solo bike traveler… we met early in the morning at a hotel in Saraburi as we were both packing up our rides. This guy is from Malasia and was on a 2 month trip in Thailand. When I met him, it had been one month and he was turning around because he missed his wife. Awwww!!!

Food trucks, Thai style.

Water tower, spotted on my way to Lopburi.

American architecture should really use more sparkles.

A girl and her hound dog

Patiently waiting for the banana man. One of these guys stole a water bottle I was carrying (not so patiently) just after the public beating incident. I guess I wasn’t paying attention…

Early morning road food on the way to Ayutthaya… coconut cream filled sandwiches…ohhh boy

Quick bridge pic on the way to Ayutthaya

A helpful sign at one of the Kmer temple ruins in Ayutthaya. Complete with headless buddha.

Buddha’s head in banyan tree roots, Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya

Most of the Buddhas at Wat Mahathat are missing their heads from the Burmese invasion where the statues were defaced (beheaded?)

The one intact Buddha.

One of the prangs at Wat Mahathat… Deja Vu from Angkor Wat, no?

I took a train the rest of the way into Bangkok, and had to grab a small ferry to reach the train station in Ayutthaya. Amphibibike!

I spent about 4 days in Bangkok and had a great time. I wish I had been able to stay a bit longer. I binged on street food. I got to reconnect with Soraya, a friend from my lab at Cornell, who is now a professor at Mahidol University in BKK. So good catch up! I visited Jacky at Probike and got my bike box, and got to have dinner with him and his family. His wife made some amazing Thai food, and Jacky kindly put me in touch with some bike shop friends in India, where I am now.

I also went walking through Lumphini park, which I didn’t realize had just become the headquarters of the famous Bangkok protesters who want to see the prime minister step down so that a fair election can take place.

The Lumphini park protester camp was like a mini city…. 300,000 people camped in tents. It was the most highly organized tent city I have ever seen, and from a public health standpoint was pretty impressive. The city actually set up temporary showers and toilets, and took care of trash services for the park. There were free water and food stations, and volunteer medical services. The park was split up into sub-neighborhoods according to where in Thailand you are from. If you want to move your tent to another area, you have to register with a new sub-group.

As I was walking through the park taking pictures, I met a woman named Sophia who is Thai, but lives in San Francisco. Her brother is involved in the protest, and she was there visiting their family. She took me on a tour of the park, showed me her tent, and introduced me to a few of her friends who were working security for the protest movement. It was awesome to be able to talk with her in English and ask all sorts of questions about what’s going on there. At the time I visited, the place was really calm, not much going on. I got a bit worried at one point, when I learned that four protesters had been shot as they were driving toward the capital (far from Lumphini park, but still I didn’t know if there would be a response). Everything was fine…. it felt like a big lazy block party.

The more time I spent talking with Sophia, the more complicated her personal story got about why she was back in Thailand, why she was camped in a tent here, and when she would go back to her family in San Francisco. The short version is that her brother had stolen her passport, making her cancel her flight back to the US, and effectively grounding her in Bangkok. A few times I was walking with her around the park, she would go find her brother and try to convince him to give it back to her. He wouldn’t do it. I even went with her to visit the Buddhist monk whom she asked for advice on the whole situation. He was a smiley old guy, but I don’t think he told her what she wanted to hear. I still don’t think I know half the whole story or if what I do know is true, but I felt awful for her and wished there was something I could do. She hadn’t seen her husband or her kids since November.

A glorious reunion with professor Soraya! Everything I know about measuring stress response in Listeria, I learned from this smokin hottie.

I spent one morning visiting the Royal Palace in Bangkok. The Royal palace is an entire campus of temples, palaces and monuments for receiving special guests and honoring the gods.

Everything was covered in gold and sparkles… the detail was incredible. You could stare at the side of one building for an hour and not get bored. This is what I suspect at least, I didn’t do the full experiment.

Lotus flowers all around.

Incredible details.

This is a throne, made entirely of mother of pearl… Sorry it’s blurry, it was a clandestine shot. I wonder how long it will take the Thai gov’t to tell me to take this down.

More glitz.

Jackie and me at ProBike in Bangkok… big thanks to him for the bike box, tuneup and delicious homecooked meal. For all your cycling needs in Bangkok… Probike is in the Siam Square area, just north of Lumphini park.

Cool that BKK has a bike share program

A rare moment on Rama I street, with minimal traffic. This is the situation in BKK though… elevated metro tracks and pedestrian covered walkways so you don’t have to walk through traffic. Bikes get to mix in down below with everyone else… can be terrifying, but it’s a cakewalk compared to biking in India (ooh foreshadowing!)

Because ProBike was right near Lumphini park, I thought I’d go walking around. This is when I realized I had walked into protester camp headquarters, and I met Sophia and her friend as I was walking around.

The protesters want the prime minister gone (very attractive picture of her on this sign), because they say her nepotism and corruption prevents any fair election from happening.

Water station for tent city residents

Protesters at Lumphini park. There was no rally or event going on at this point, just people living in the park. There was a central stage and screen where there was always a speech or presentation going on.

Drinking coffee with Sophia in her sub neighborhood within the park.

If you don’t have a bicycle, this is the next best way to get around BKK. The motorcycle taxi guys wear vests, their rides are cheaper, and they zip in between the traffic so you can get where you’re going without the hot sweaty wait in traffic.

Packed up and headed out, again… Great airport experience with Thai Airways. Super nice and no waits (at each of the 4 desks I had to visit in order to check in, check my bike, pay for my bike, and deliver it to the oversized luggage people).

So there are my two weeks in Thailand…. hugely intense moments that punctuated the mostly-dull cycling, which I’ve begun to view simply as a way to support my bad habit of street food overeating. I had a great time and I realize that my experiences are unique to a wandering bike-tour mode of travel that I won’t soon be able to repeat. But, I would love to go back to catch the iconic spots I missed. I resolved that I could always go back and visit Chiang Mai, or go diving in the southern islands as a “regular tourist,” and this made me feel better as I got tired and bored of the biking routine and the highway hotels.

Next post from Bangalore!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I gotta get out of here, but I just can’t leave….

I did eventually leave Cambodia. But while I was in the country, I felt like Cambodia was trying to both fry me out of existence and wrap me in a big dusty hug.

It was the most difficult country to bike in by far…. 100 degree heat, lots of dust, endless flat landscape, and only a handful of stick-straight roads to choose from. The national highways were recently paved (the major ones were finished in about 2009, and there are still gravel stretches on those), and most other roads are a pretty red sand that’s great for fishtailing. Long days on the bike (6-7 hours, at my lowly 12-14 mph clip…) are necessary, because there are huge stretches without places to stay the night, and I ruled out camping because I’m not hardcore enough to go without a shower out here!

I also have to admit that I pretty much knew all of this going in…. the few bike blogs out there about Cambodia are either written by crazies who write things like “puking over my handlebars” and “after 150 km, I passed out”, or people with good intentions who “put our bikes on the bus, again!” I didn’t really want to be either of these, but I think I ended up a little of both.

While Cambodia was trying to kill me, it was also really beautiful, quirky and quiet, and it gave me some of the kindest friends I’ve met on my trip. As soon as I crossed the border from Vietnam, it was clear I was on my own in a totally new place. No more rice/noodle shacks every 50 feet or whizzing motorbikes…. it was literally just me on National Highway 2, for a long time. Sometimes there were nice trees lining the sides of the road with nice shade, but often not. When I saw people, they were on bikes or motorcycles or on strange home-built tractor things with big trailers of stuff. Sometimes I saw folks working in the rice fields, but most of the land looked pretty dry. The landscape was flat like Vietnam, but now the Mekong river crossings were gone and there were fewer houses and farm buildings.

It was nice to be so alone, but honestly it got really unnerving too! What if I got thirsty or hungry? Where are all the little roadside stands with cold drinks and funny snacks?? That first day I rode 80 km from Chau Doc, Vietnam to a small town called Takeo, Cambodia, and it was stressful getting there because I had no local money and I did get thirsty. I didn’t find any money changers at the border, and Takeo is the first town, 60 km later. In Cambodia they use US dollars and Khmer Riel, and all I had were Vietnamese Dong and a $20. I finally found a lady with an orange cooler box on the side of the road, and asked for a bottle of water…. but she couldn’t change my $20 and couldn’t use Vietnamese money. She smiled and just gave me the water…. what a saint. Looking back, I wish I had just given her the $20 and left. It bothered me for awhile after that, that I didn’t. Eventually I made it to Takeo, found an ATM, a SIM card and a shower.

These loaded bikes were headed for the border market just as I came into cambodia. I hope those big sacks are filled with foam or something…. can’t believe the bikes can even take loads like that!

Rice out drying in the sun

Harvesting the rice…. I’m sure I’ll see those big turquoise bags loaded up on motorcycles and bikes at some point!

Sometimes there were trees lining the road from the border to Takeo…. the shade was always welcome. These bikes were just hanging out alone by the side of the road.

The ride to Takeo was just the emergency I had been saving these for!! Found them in a fancy bakery/candy store in Vietnam. I had 60-70 km to bike from the border to Takeo, and didn’t have the right money to buy snacks along the way.

Made it to Takeo!

I visited the market and someone gave me a few of these to try…. they were delicious! Fried up in soy sauce…. a little crunchy….

One popular brand of Cambodian beer is called Angkor. Another is called Anchor (pronounced with a “ch”). Beer here costs less than a dollar.

I was drinking my Angkor and eating dinner alone, and afterward a bunch of guys from the Electorate of Cambodia handed me another beer and invited me to sit with them. Their buddy holding the chicken leg here is actually Vietnamese and they kept making fun of him. Good times with beer and Khmer flash cards!!

The next day was another long one, all the way to Phnom Penh…. my 7th day in a row on the bike before a rest day or two in the city. I was tired and it was hot and gross, but that morning during breakfast I met Venny and his mom, and they completely made my day despite the tough ride. I was struggling to order coffee and breakfast at a roadside cafe, as usual, and they were sitting nearby and helped me with the Khmer (Pronounced “Kmy” like “Km-eye”) I was trying to learn. We got to talking, and I learned they were in Takeo for an eye Dr. appointment for Venny’s mom, but that they’d be heading back to Phnom Penh the same day. Venny speaks enough English that we could actually communicate, and helped me out a lot with some Khmer phrases. So we exchanged phone numbers and facebooks (everyone in the world has FB, btw), and they passed me a few times on the motorbike on the way to P.P. When I got there, they ended up inviting me to dinner at their house! The next set of photos is from Phnom Penh, including a harrowing visit to Cheung Ek, or one of the main Killing Fields sites near P.P. I’ll describe this better in the photo captions.

It was exciting to have a navigational decision to make!

I stopped every hour or so (20 km) for a cold drink and some shade.

This is how things look when I’d stop… Use the Khmer phrase list to try to order some ice coffee with just a little milk. Success this time!

Pretty entrances to wats, neighborhoods and schools along the road.

About 10 km outside Phnom Penh, the road turned to a dusty mess. Looked like it had been under construction for awhile.

Street food papaya salad… a delicious recipe for diarrhea for sure. Not for me though… I eat street food with reckless abandon since the doxycycline for malara prophylaxis is protective against some enteric bugs too.

Fish curry

A Khmer dessert, called “Pnk’aym”… this stuff is amazing. You pick 2 or 3 things, like mung beans, red beans, jellies, or pumpkin, and the vendor combines them in a bowl and pours sweetened coconut milk and ice over it.

From the back of the tuktuk I rode to get out to Cheung Ek, the killing fields memorial site near Phnom Penh.

This is one of only a few photos I could stand to take here. Cheung Ek is where the Khmer Rouge brought the “city people” – intellectuals, professionals, even people with glasses who looked smart – to be mass-murdered during the genocide from 1974-1978. The landscape is full of shallow grassy depressions, some covered with roofs like the one here, to honor the dead. People were taken from their homes in trucks, and bludgeoned to death before falling into the mass grave pits. This all happened at night, to the soundtrack of diesel generators and patriotic music so people nearby didn’t know what was going on.

Although many of the remains have been exhumed in order to learn who had been killed and how, pieces of bone and cloth still come to the surface, especially after the rainy season. I saw a few pieces of bone on the ground as I was walking. The staff at Cheung Ek collect these,and some are put in glass boxes that you can see during the self-guided audio tour. This piece of jaw was on one of the boxes of bones.

This memorial stupa was built to honor all those who were murdered. Inside are 9000 skulls. The main Khmer Rouge leaders are still in the process of trial for war crimes, and their leader Pol Pot was able to live out his life after fleeing to Thailand. He was married again after the genocide, was wealthy, and died of a heart attack in his 80s. The audio tour was really well done and reverently spoken… there were stories of survivors and Khmer Rouge members alike.

I was glad to be able to visit Venny and his family after the Cheung Ek visit. We sat and talked a long time, and I learned that he has had tetanus! He hadn’t had the vaccine, so was violently sick for two weeks. During that time he said he had to “be a monk” for two weeks, and stay in the Pogodas to pray for healing. He has 3 sisters, one of whom lives in Michigan with his dad. His mom lived in the US for a year or so, but came back after her visa wasn’t renewed.

Venny’s mom and sister Muoyheak, with the delicious dinner they made! Green beans, ginger fish, pickled cabbage… so good.

What Phnom in Phnom penh. I like the Nagas (snake heads) that protect the temples here.

This guy was selling good luck birds. You buy one and then let it go. I totally did it.

This is a spirit house… it’s hard to tell, but it’s about 2 x 3 feet andup on a pedestal. It’s a place for the spirits to live if they’re still here.

Always take your shoes off before going in the temple.

The national museum

Flowers at the national museum

I had dinner at a restaurant called Lotus Blanc, which is a training program for disadvantaged kids to get training in the hospitality industry. I was the only one there when I got there!

Students having a brief meeting… they had just finished a year of coursework and had just started their practical restaurant training. It was really cute and awkward… they were nervous and excited about everything and I felt like someone was watching me the whole time I ate. Couldn’t put my glass down without someone coming over to ask if I wanted more! They are selected for the program by an application, and then the school pays their parents in rice, to make up for the lost productivity from having their son/daughter in school and not working at home.

And the food was really good! This is a chicken banana flower salad I ordered.

After taking a few days off in P.P., I felt better but wasn’t ready for another week of long, hot Cambodian biking. I bought a bus ticket to bypass the dust and traffic of the city, and start my way west toward Siem Reap and Thailand. This way, I still had a few days to bike, but they could be shorter days and I’d have some time to hang out at Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, before biking another couple days to the Thai border.

The same day I bought the bus ticket, Venny called and said he was going south to the coast town of Kampot for the weekend with a couple of friends, and wanted me to go along. I said I’d just bought a bus ticket and that I didn’t think I could, but really appreciated the invite. He paused, and said “I really want you to go, you go to Siem Reap later?”

It was already 10pm, I was planning to wake up at 5 to catch my bus north, and follow the plan of moving a bit quicker through and out of the country. But I didn’t have a good reason to say no to the invitation…. who’s “schedule” am I on here?! In Bonder-land, there is no schedule! Much as I really just wanted to leave the heat and the dust, I said “of course I can go later. Seeya in Kampot in two days.”

It’s been so nice to have a good friend my age and to speak a little English, and I was tired of the grind of biking alone every day. So I stayed up another few hours, looking at maps and trying to figure out how to get down to Kampot for the weekend, and then back up to Siem Reap, without spending the ENTIRE time on a bus. I wanted to bike, just not insane distances every day. I woke up early, changed my bus ticket from going north to going south, and got off on the side of the road about 70 km from Kampot. It was hot and gross, but I set the Garmin route destination to “Kampot pie and ice cream palace” (I kid you not! ICE CREAM PALACE!!), and got my ride on.

I bussed about halfway to Kampot, and then asked to be dropped off on the side of the road in order to bike the last 70 km or so. Here’s a pic of another Khmer roadside wedding… these were awesome, always a lot of music, decorations and people in fancy dresses.

Students out biking to/from school

Example of a house along National Hwy 3, between Phnom Penh and Kampot… I think they’re lifted to keep the snakes and rats out, and the rain during the wet season.

Sometimes kids would ride with me for a little while.

Spirit houses for sale! Pick your spirits’ favorite color!

Fresh pressed cane palm juice… I made myself go a whole hour before I could stop for one of these icy beverages. Or three. If course I had water in my water bottles, but it was hot water after only a few minutes so I made a lot of short stops for cold drinks. These kids were cute, and helped me practice some Khmer.

Loaded up motorbikes, headed into the village. Another pic from the bikeride into the southern coastal town of Kampot.

I arrived in Kampot on a thursday, and Venny and his friend Dara met me there on friday afternoon. The first thing we did was to head down to the park by the river for a proper photo shoot. These guys were clearly pros at taking and starring in the pics!

I think we took more selfies this one weekend than I have on the whole trip…

Kampot photo shoot

There’s one “mountain” in this area, called Bokor mountain (a little less than 1000 m elevation). The next day, I rented a motorbike and the four of us headed up to Bokor. There were 4 of us because Venny and Dara’s other coworker and friend Lin came to join.

Headed to Bokor on the motorbikes… it was so nice to feel a cool breeze, even a small elevation gain made a big difference. Pretty roadside flowers too.

We stopped to pray at the shrine on the way.

After our trip up to Bokor mountain, we rested awhile and then took the motorbikes half hour east, to the coastal town of Kep. Kep is famous for its seafood and the pepper (like peppercorns) that is grown there. When we arrived, we stopped at the market and bought some shrimp and crabs right out of the water.

Rinsing the shrimp. A kilo of shrimp and a kilo of crabs cost about $10 total, and the ladies at the market boil them up for you in a salty stock. We took these to the beach and had a sunset seafood picnic!

Venny helping me pick out some Kep peppercorns to bring home.

Excited about the seafood picnic! Oh yeah, and another photo shoot. 🙂

After the seafood picnic, we went for a swim in the bay, and then stopped at a resort that was hosting a free concert. I’d heard about this from another American named Galen, who I met on the bus from Phnom Penh. The band was the “Cambodian Space Project” and they’re hilarious… look em up on youtube, they;re kind of B-52-esque. My favorite song is “Have visa, no have rice.” This is a pic from the outdoor concert… Dara, Galen, Me and Venny.

So glad I changed my plans and went south for the weekend instead of north as planned! After an awesome weekend of Khmer music videos, riverside photo shoots and a crab boil, I bit the bullet and spent 12 awful hours on a bus back to P.P. and then all the way to Siem Reap. I splurged on a $25 hotel with a nice room, AC and a pool, and had fun biking all around the Angkor Archaeological site, looking at all the Wats. Found some bubble tea in town too… whew!!

Just a quick blurb here about Angkor and the Wats, for anyone else out there like me who’s heard of it but didn’t really know much else besides “It’s ancient.” This is mostly thanks to a visitor’s guidebook I picked up at my schwank hotel.

So the Khmer empire was really powerful (in military, economics and culture) between the 9-12th centuries AD across Cambodia, and much of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos. Angkor was the capital of the empire. During these centuries, a number of Kings reined (7 of them were named Jayavarman, with numbers I-VII to tell them apart!) and built huge temples with big moats and elaborate systems to carry water. The reasons for having temples varied…. to honor gods or the Buddha, to have a central point for a city, or a place to be buried and have your royal funeral.

There are over 45 temples (Wats) in the Angkor area, and they’re spread out over about 50km (Although the biggest and most famous dozen or so are concentrated in probably a 5 km radius). These were built at different times by different kings, and my favorite part was how the dominant religion changed a few times between Hinduism and Buddhism (early Indian influence brought Hinduism to the area). Early temples built to honor the Buddha were sometimes defaced a century later, when Hinduism made a brief comeback. You can see Buddhas that were “fixed” to look like Boddhisatvas or other Hindu figures, and in one place, they just put a big “stupa” that looks like a unicorn horn in the central shrine of the Wat. Just couldn’t agree on who should be sculpted there….?!

Anyhow, Angkor Wat is the most famous of the temples and is considered the “best” architecturally (not sure by what measures…). It was built in the mid-12th century during the height of Angkorian influence. The other temples are cool too though, and sometimes I could really see the differences in styles among the kings who built them. For example, there was one king after the guy who built Angkor Wat who built a bunch of other wats, really quickly. His style includes large stone faces, and is generally more sloppy and less detailed than previous kings. It was cool to see those hallmarks of thoughts and preferences held by guys who have been dead for so long.

I think biking is definitely a great way to visit the Wats….. the roads get a bit jammed with tuktuks and tour vans. Just be sure you go early in the morning or you’ll be way too hot to want to see another wat!!

Bike and Buddha

The main Angkor Wat temple is surrounded by a big square moat, about 500 m long on each side. This is from the bridge over the west side of the moat.

Angkor Wat… I arrived before 8am to beat the heat and get a few pics before the hoards of tours showed up.

Many of the temples were undergoing restoration.

The walls and pillars have lots of shallow relief sculptures like this one. I’m not sure of the stories behind all of them, but I did eavesdrop on a few tour groups. This was a dancer… Angkorian roayal celebrations always involved big dance shows.

I found a footprint! Maybe some kid thought it would be funny 800 years ago, to walk in the wet mud…

Relief covering the south wall of Angkor wat. A tour guide was describing how this relief tells the story of the judgement and the lives of people who are sent to heaven, earth, and hell.

Here’s the great judge, carried by servants on earth. Below, are people in hell, getting beaten by the guy on the right.

Check out my hideous but wat-appropriate dress! Got this gem at a market in Phnom Penh. At the wats, you have to have your shoulders covered and your legs down to your knees. Wearing a dress was cooler than the bike clothes I have, even if I had to hike up the skirt to bike around the wats.

My favorite part of bike commuting… zooming up through the gate past all the traffic!

Moving on from Angkor wat, this is from Angkor Thom, one of the Bayon style temples, built by another king a hundred years or so after Angkor Wat. Jayavaraman VII built a bunch of temples quickly, so people say these are more sloppy and less detailed than earlier temples like Angkor wat. The big huge heads are also characteristic of Bayon-style temples.

Relief from a Bayon temple

Bike appreciating the terrace of the elephants

This is a small temple called Phimeanakas, also part of the Angkor Thom complex. This style of temple is called “mountain temple” because of the tiers and pyramid shape. Most of the Angkor temples are considered mountain temples, I read.

I found a foot.

This is the reward for biking all the way out to the farthest eastern wat in the main Angkor park area… it’s called Ta Som and a tree is growing over the eastern gate! It’s slowly destroying the stone, but cool looking nonetheless.

The Villa Siem Reap… simple but nice guest house with a pool and nice staff.

After Siem Reap, I buckled down and rode 2 more days before crossing into Thailand. My legs were fresh, but the long stretches of unchanging scenery made me cave and plug my headphones in, first time since starting this whole trip. The music was nice, and I apologized in my head to all the kids whose roadside “Hello!”s I wouldn’t hear or shout back to.

Yet another wedding on the side of the highway… these were the biggest most colorful events where I would see people while biking, so there are lots of pics of them!

Skinny cow

This type of cart was one of the most creative of the homemade vehicles I saw… they’re like tractors with long steering columns. Behind the driver is a big flatbed trailer, probably loaded with things 10 feet tall. It was a fun challenge to try to get pics of these guys while we were both moving down the road. They didn’t go very fast, a few kph faster than me.

Anatomy of a cambodian roadside refreshment stop. On the right, the ubiquitous big orange cooler. These are filled with drinks and usually ice. In the center, some box of snacks for sale, and on the left under the umbrella, gas for motorbikes aliquotted into coke bottles. One coke bottle of gas is a liter and costs 50 cents to 1 dollar.

To get a sense of what this ride was like, call to your head all the songs you know about highways, dusty road trips, and lonely deserts. This here’s my chrome ‘n’ steel. 🙂

I’m not sure, but I wondered if all these ducks were for eating. There were tons of them here, and I saw the same kinds of ducks hanging by their feet from the backs of motorcycles.

I saw this man sitting out here… there was no one else around, and no houses… where did he come from?? I hope the puddle cooled him off a bit.

I totally got burned at this roadside snack stand. I passed a few of these and couldn’t guess what these things were, so I sopped and bought one to try. I assumed some kind of rice-based candy. WRONG. These are weird sausage things, and hidden in the middle is a HOT PEPPER. Big mistake.

As I got close to the border, there were more road signs. This was apparently the only sign worth writing in English.

The border crossing was no problem, and after waiting in a long line of tourists in a big building with AC, I was back in a place with busy streets, cars, buildings, and more human activity in general. It was something of a relief, but a little sad at the same time.  The first challenge was to realize that I would be biking on the left and not the right in Thailand…. been doing ok with that so far. More on the Thai transition in a few weeks!

 

 

 

 

Tour de (Mekong) Delta

After the gluttony and luxury in the Philippines, I arrived in Saigon with a mission.  No more fun and games, folks, time for some serious miles!  If I’m going to spend quality time in 5 countries in the next 4 months, it means I need to complete my route through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in aboout 5 weeks.  Definitely a different mindset than my first 3 months, dawdling around S. America, biking a few days then staying put for a week…. but I’m ready for a little routine and a little more exercise (read: I plan to eat everything that looks remotely delicious).

After a 2-hour flight to Ho Chi Minh City, I met up with Hanh, my good friend Phu’s aunt.  Hanh is a busy woman who runs several small businesses in Saigon, but took the time to pick me up with my giant bike box at the airport.  I speak zero Vietnamese and she speaks only slightly more English than that, so I got to put the Vietnamese flashcards I made to use right away. This is the first country where I don’t speak the language at all, so some hilarious adjustments have been required!  I learned I can get by almost exclusively with “Hello!”, “Thank you”, “Sorry/excuse me,” “Bathroom”, and “How much?”.  Useful secondary phrases include “What is this?”, “Yes I’m traveling alone”, “I’m 29”, and “No, I’m not marrried and I have no children.”  (I’ve learned that all around the world, people get right to the point when asking questions of foreign travelers.)

Hanh kindly put me up in her condo for the first 3 nights, so I could explore the city, reassemble my bike, and get ready to head out.  She was so kind and patient, despite a few cultural SNAFUs….!  For example, at one point I thought that shopping for and cooking breakfast for us both would be a nice “thank you” for hosting me.  Instead, I thoroughly terrorized the poor woman.

We couldn’t communicate except via google translate (see pic of completely useless-but-funny translations below….), so I just went and bought some veggies, eggs and tofu and tried my best to explain my plan (fail).  Later, I find out (via Skype translator session with Phu), that Hanh was terrified because she thought I wanted HER to cook for ME, using the food I had bought.  Further, broccoli and bell pepper are not standard vietnamese vegetables so Hanh neither likes them nor knows how she would cook them.  And even WORSE, she doesn’t like spicy food and was scared to even touch the bell pepper (she thought it was a hot pepper), let alone cook or eat it… all while being frustrated and nervous about communicating this to me or possibly offending me.

Oh god! The poor thing…. Let the “experiential cultural education” continue…. I have much to learn!

Hanh and I, having breakfast Pho the day after I arrived.

Hanh is an entrepreneur, and among other things, she runs a car rental business from the parking lot of a condo she is renovating (but doesn’t live in currently). Her condo unit is the one painted all white…. in the center next to the one with green shutters.

You know there is little hope when google translates someones ideas to “shrink defenders” and “whipping child stars”.

Besides eating Pho, the next important stereotypic activity I did in Vietnam was to get a pedicure.

One of each, please. From left to right, top to bottom: Jackfruit, Sapodilla (my favorite!!), papaya, [forgot name, tart crunchy fruit], mango, and watermelon.

I was captivated by the streets/traffic in Saigon….. the streets were simultaneously empty, but frighteningly chaotic. There were almost zero cars, just motorbikes and bicycles which take up little physical space. So the streets didn’t look full, but people would fly into intersections from all directions without stopping which created the illusion of “someone is going to die here, at this moment.” This fortunately didn’t happen, at least while I was watching!!

Coolest bike in Saigon….. check out the rainbow spokes!!! Best part, I saw more than one of these beauties around town.

Watching my spicy street food in the making. My strategy is to hover sketchily while the person makes food for someone else. Then, if I think it looks good, I point, smile, and ask how much. This was delicious…. rice noodles, shaved green mango, crunchy dried fish, fish sauce, lime, cilantro and other goodies I don’t know the names of.

It took about 15 minutes for me to ask and figure out just what exactly these were (different kind of fish balls), and whether they needed to be cooked or not (no). Delicious. And yep, that’s my empty cup of bubble tea in the foreground.

The same place sold raw skewered foods that were cooked infront of you on the table. Also delicious.

This is TinTin, a friend I met who helped me buy a Vietnamese SIM card for my phone. He invited me to eat Banh Xeo and take a spin around the city on his motorbike. So nice!

Traffic jam, from the back of a motorbike downtown Saigon.

 

After 3 days in Saigon, I headed out early on the bike, westward across the Mekong delta. I knew it would be hot, but entirely flat so I went almost 100km the first day.  I biked every day for 7 days (crossed the Cambodian border on day 6), and spent the night in Ben Tre, Vinh Long, Can Tho, Long Xuyen and Chau Doc. You can see the route at https://share.delorme.com/beeronabike.  The tour is ON! Not messing around!  Haha it actually worked well to stay in a new place each night…. I’d bike 4-6 hours in the morning, and arrive to a new place in time for lunch, a shower, sink laundry, and some town exploration. This photo set gives a few highlights of the short but fun Tour de Delta.

Early breakfast Pho in an alley on the way out of Saigon

Silly me, thinking I’d “beat the traffic” by leaving at 7am. Biking with all the motos was actually really fun…. kind of like real life mariokart. The lack of cars and similar speed of the motos and bikes made it more exciting and less scarier. Definitely less scary than being a pedestrian trying to cross the river of crazy moto traffic.

Almost everyone on a motorbike wears a facemask, and they come in zillions of colors and patterns. I broke down and bought one after about 3 hours, for protection from sun, dust and exhaust. Yeeah, bringin sexy back.

Roads in Vietnam are in great shape, and they seem to love big suspension bridges. The cool thing about biking the Mekong delta is you get to cross tons of bridges every day, big and small. Helps keep the scenery interesting, in an otherwise flat landscape.

That’s one big river…. this is the “main” Mekong river (does that even exist down here?), a view from the suspension bridge on the way to Ben Tre the first day.

Pile of durians at sunset.

Meet the Rambutan, spikey and red on the outside, soft and juicy in the middle.

To navigate across the delta, I’ve been using OpenStreetMaps, which has been awesome (leaves Garminn maps in the dust). On the route from Ben Tre to Vinh Long, the bike directions sent me on a lovely shady road, just big enough for motos and bikes. As I was riding, two people stopped me and (I think) were telling me I should turn around, and go back to the main road. One guy held up an open palm, and pointed his other finger straight into it…. this seemed to signal “dead end.” I said thanks, but kept going…. I really liked this road, and the map said that it would meeet another larger road in only 10 km. If they’re right, I could turn around without losing much ground or time.

I enjoyed the shady quiet road thoroughly, and then came to the best dead end ever! Literally, the road led straight off this dock. While I stood there looking around and thinking of what to do, a little ferry pulled up and I got on.

The boat took me across to the other side of the river (Open Street maps didn’t show this particular Mekong tributary….), and I hoped really hard that the nice road would just continue over on this side. Or, that the ferry would hang out to take me back. One of the two…. please!

Everything turned out great, I found the continuation of the road close to the ferry dock, and kept following the OSM route just as before. Crossed some cool little bridges along the way, like this one.

The Mekong delta is the “rice basket” of SE Asia, and I saw lots of other agriculture as well. One thing I miss is being able to ask “what is being grown here?”, I phrase I used a lot in S. America. I saw so much that I wanted to learn about, but couldn’t ask.

An example of a house along the small road…. I saw a big variety of homes and shelters. From palm-roofed shacks to brightly colored french-style estates with pillars.

These guys made me smile. I’m getting better at snapping covert photos while biking.

On a big ferry boat on the way to Vinh Long…. made me feel like I was back in Seattle! Except, no cars just motorbikes and bikes. 🙂

Hotel bang-for-buck in Vietnam is WAY better than in S. America…. this place was $12! That’s a tea set on the dresser, and there’s AC plus a shower water heater (not that I needed hot water!). For the same price in S. America, things look quite a bit different.

At the market in Vinh Long…. lots of mystery desserts that incorporate gelatin or agar or some kind.

Pretty beans

Vinh Long street market. Notice the floral print matching pantsuit…. this was a major women’s fashion trend in Vietnam. All different kinds of printed fabrics, made into the same style of matching top and pants.

I bought some banana “wine” at a stall along the road, and decided to have a little while enjoying the sunset. I should’ve looked at the %ABV, bc this was more like banana whiskey. I did not like it! I later tried mixing it into a fruit smoothie which was good, but I ended up giving the bottle away to the smoothie vendor lady.

Flying kites

I always had good bike company while riding, and most folks rode something that looked like this. French, cruiser-looking bikes, all silver (except that rainbow one in saigon….). The wheels are all radially laced, so the spokes don’t cross at all. This pattern is not very strong at all, so I was extra impressed when I’d see people riding bikes completely loaded down with wood or bags of rice.

Vermicelli bowl breakfast before heading out for the day. Next stop was Can Tho, the largest city in the Mekong, and 4th largest in Vietnam.

I arrived in Can Tho before noon, and so my hotel room wasn’t ready yet. So I went to the riverfront and grabbed a boat tour through the small canals and floating market.

Thuy, my skilled and fearless captain! It was just the two of us, and she took me all around. It was nice to see the delta from the water instead of from the road for awhile.

A house along one of the windy canals. Note the pipes carrying wastewater out to the river

I couldn’t tell what this man was doing waist-deep in the water…. cleaning something….?

Cool bridge

At one point we stopped and Thuy got out her knife and started cutting one of the palms of a coconut tree (The striped fabric is the top of the boat’s shade awning).

…. she made the coconot palm fiber into this cool grasshopper, all while driving the boat! This guy decorates my bike now, along with a bracelet she made me out of the same thing.

My favorite house from the boat tour…. I llove the rainbow roof!!!

I met some Americans for the first time in Vietnam at the hotel in Can Tho…. Caitlin and Carly are PhD students in geography, from Madison!! I got about an hour late start in the morning since it was so fun talking with them…. they were doing field work for a project on climate impacts on rice paddy production. We had a few friends/colleagues in common so it was fun to geek out for a while.

Back on the road to Long Xuyen…. crossing… another bridge!

The cool kids in Vietnam ride bikes.

I was riding along a main road with lots of traffic, but it looked like there was a parallel small road on the other side of the river. Found another little ferry and went across to see.

Yes! So glad to have a good set of maps. The parallel road was small, quiet, and I got to sit and have an ice coffee with some nice women along the way.

On this road, traffic jams could be described as “cute” and “not annoying.” I like those kinds of traffic jams best.

Looking back over to the major road, with all of its busses and large honkey vehicles. But, the little road ended and (luckily) there was another ferry to get me back across after a nice 10km break.

Back to the main road…. I’m not sure what these colorful stones were, drying in the sun…. looked like aquarium rock to me but I didn’t investigate very closely.

At one point, I started hearing a loud voice speaking in Vietnamese and realized it was coming from speakers like this one, every 100 yards or so. Again, I wanted to ask someone “who is talking, and what are they saying?” But that would have been too advanced a conversation to entrust to google translate.

Last day in Vietnam, going from Chau Doc across the border to Takeo in Cambodia. I took another quiet parallel road and enjoyed the combination of good pavement plus no traffic, with plentiful ice coffee stands along the way.

Last Vietnamese ice coffee. When I stopped here, there were about 4 people, a few playing pool and one woman who couldn’t seem to stop laughing, at me, or whatever was so funny! Funny flashcard-mediated conversation ensued, and by the time I left, I realized that there were now about a dozen people hanging out there. They were good sports and rallied for a photo.

This is the view of the old, closed and decrepit bridge that Open Street Maps directed me to, in order to reach the Cambodian border. After a half hour of wandering, asking and google mapping, I found the new, big, actual bridge that leads to the border. The photo was taken from the correct bridge. OSM fail…. really sad! I marked the spot so I could submit an edit, when I figure out how to do that.

After a few stamps and overpaying the visa fee by $5, this lovely landscape welcomed me to Cambodia. (@#$^& border guards…. I argued and said the fee was $20, but he said “here it’s $25.” I just paid, instead of finding the official government website that says $20 and showing it to him. Me 0, government corruption 1. Sigh).

And less than a week later, I rode into Cambodia where I still am now.  It was a short time in Vietnam, and I’d love to go back and see more of the country, especially the northern mountains and costal areas.   But, I’m looking forward to getting  similar glimpses of Cambodia and Thailand too.  Cambodia has been a completely different experience so far, despite being a nextdoor neighbor.  I’ll save that for the next post!!!

The Philippines: 3 weeks of family, fish and fear of death by jeep

Compared to over 2 months in Ecuador, three weeks in the Philippines felt lightning fast (I leave for Vietnam tomorrow).  It was fast, but Ed and I filled it with so much fun and variety of experiences that bang for buck was definitely had!

Yep, I said “Ed and I”…. Ed arrived a few days before I did, and we got to spend 11 days together, scuba diving, night-bus riding, and visiting the Filipino family he had never met before.  As y’all know, Ed is Filipino and first generation American.  His parents met in San Francisco after having moved from different parts of the Philippines (PIs for short; his mom’s family is from around Manila, and his dad’s is from the mountains, in the Ifugao province). But, his parents have siblings, nieces/nephews, cousins, and children from previous marriages who live here and who have never met their nephew/uncle/brother.  For Ed, this trip was a pilgrimage, and it was pretty stinkin special for me to be there for all of the first-time meetings (and there were tons…. Ed’s definitely related to the whole town of Banaue. More on that in pics!).

First thing after I arrived (Ed had already been here 2 days, hanging with family), we hit the ground running…. south to Batangas and Anilao where we spend 2 days Scuba diving.  Thanks to my dad for the gift of Scuba lessons, I finished my certification here, instead of in frigid Puget Sound.  This part of the Philippines is like the Amazon rainforest of coral reefs…. huge coral diversity along with all the big stuff!  Ed has an underwater camera but I don’t have all the goods as of this moment…. for underwater pics, either scroll down a bit to my second dive trip, or keep an eye on Ed’s facebook page for some sweet video footage and pics.

Riding in the Barangay van after hitting the ground! In the front are Inte and Kel…. two fantastic guys who are not only family, but took us all around Manila in style. This van is sort of like a pickup truck with a covered bed and benches. There was a big sunroof where I could get a face full of Manila smog, along with a lay of the land….

View from the sunroof! Manila is THE densest city in the world (thanks, wikipedia) with over 110,000 people per square mile. Traffic is horrendus, and much of the traffic is made of these old school, chromed-out diesel jeep-busses, called “Jeepneys.”

Drivin the Jeepney… this picture is clear because we were at a dead stop in traffic. This is pretty normal.

Inte and Kel dropped us off at the bus station, and two hours later we were in beach zone. After a few hours of trying to find a place to stay, we found a great little hotel and dive center where we could stay, eat and dive on Mabini peninsula, in Anilao. The place is called Lead Marine, and we learned that Anilao isn’t the best place to just show up and find something. Conversely, the only places you can find online are insanely expensive so I’m glad things turned out as well as they did! Good price, good place, happily ever after.

After a sick dive! Like I said, Ed has all the good pics including underwater shots and videos. We’re a little behind transferring the photos between us…. stand by!

Directly from the Scuba vacation in Batangas, we hopped a bus back to Manila and then all the way up to Baguio city.  A full day of travel…. over 8 hours in total. At least the VictoryLiner bus we took had a cute-as-button conductor/stewardess and free wifi.  We arrived in Baguio where the Gano family first-time meetings got going in a hurry!

Thanks to Jane Gano for picking us up at the bus station, we got to the hotel where we met Teresa, Beth and 10-year-old Steven. Jane, Teresa, Beth and their sister Mila are the daughters of Gerry Gano, one of Ed’s half brothers. This makes them Ed’s nieces, although he’s not the oldest one in the pic! I’m going to try to keep the family straight in the blog, but please forgive me if I make a genealogical mistake! Corrections are easily made…. just shoot me a note.

Together we went to an awesome Filipino restaurant where I ate several times what stomachs are supposed to hold.

The gang at dinner…. from L to R: Ed, Jane Gano, Jane’s partner Jeng, Beth Gano, Teresa Gano and her partner Jun

While we were in Baguio, the annual Flower Festival was gearing up with a market and a botanical show. There was also a stage, which was empty at the moment except for this one little girl who was dancing like nobody was watching. There was no show, no audience (except me and a few other people), but some music was playing and she was all over it.

In the Baguio market, we came across this shop with an interesting name.

Turns out Sonia, the owner is a distant Gano relative and Ed had fun playing the name game and looking at the catalog of furniture and other woodworks that she and her family make to sell.

Asleep(ney) in the Jeepney.

Jane and Steven (her nephew, Beth’s son) at the Botanical gardens.

Tragically, we spent only one day with the Baguio Ganos before grabbing an overnight bus (terrible, but necessary!) to Banaue.  Banaue is in the mountains east of Baguio, but is a smaller village. Banaue is the largest town in Ifugao province and when Ed’s dad lived here (1940s-50s), he built one of the first and nicest houses in the area.  This is after he built another earlier house, in the tiny area of Gohang, before the age of, oh, 30.  Another of Ed’s neices, Mila, lives in the Baguio house with her family and kindly invited us to stay with them.

Ed and Mila’s daughter, Rizjoy at the house built by Ed’s day Ginonnay (That’s his Ifugao name, but he went by Jeronimo)

The taller part on the left is an addition, and another of Ed’s nephews, Derick, lives there with his family.

Rizjoy and Ed at the breakfast table….. Rizjoy is 26 and a nurse, and just returned from working in Saudi Arabia. She could easily be a professional chef too. 🙂

Mila, the lady of the house! Mila is a sister of the Baguio ladies (Jane, Teresa and Beth) and lives with her husband Ron, Rizjoy and her youngest son Dirk in the house her grandpa (Ed’s dad) built. Mila is a science teacher (swoon :), mother of 3, and is working on her masters every saturday. And I thought I worked hard….

Banaue is the center of the Philippine rice terrace region, and the rice cooperative is just next door to Mila’s house. Here they keep and sell tons of varieties of native rice…. this rice can only be harvested once a year (instead of 3 times, like the widely grown white rice variety in other regions), but preserving this agricultural heritage and diversity is pretty critical. Oh, and it’s prettier and way more flavorful than the normal stuff. More on rice and the terraces in the next gallery.

Standard transpo in Banaue and the rest of the PIs.

Rizjoy took us on a walking tour of Banaue, including this cool suspension bridge.

The high school that everyone goes to, and has gone to for decades….

Of course we visited the health center, and of course Ed was related to someone we met there.

Colorful market

And this is Derick Gano…. Ed’s (older than him) nephew, Banaue concierge extraordinare, family genealogist, and multilingual rice terrace tour guide. Here we’re at the market picking out some food for our hike into Batad, a village built at the foot of a huge rice terrace slope and only accessible by foot (for now….).

The next album is from 2 days hiking toward, on, through and out of the oldest and most spectacular feat of civil engineering and agriculture I’ve ever seen.  For the scenery haters, just give this a chance…. it’s incredible.  These terraces are estimated to have taken 2000 years to build, and are still maintained by farmers today even though they only support a fraction of the community’s rice needs. Tourism helps keep the Batad terraces maintained, but locals are worried the aging farmers won’t be able to keep it up, and the terraces will fade into disrepair like the ones right in Banaue have already done.  Glad we got to see them now…

Uncle and Nephew…. hiking into Batad. We took a tricycle up the road to the top of a ridge, and then hiked an hour down to Batad.

This is how we knew we made it. :p

Just a first glimpse…

And then you walk over the next ridge. This is the main hillside in Batad, and although its hard to see, there are 3 irrigation channels that go up and down, perpendicular to the terraces. These are the irrigation channels, and every step of the terrace gets fed by the rain and excess water flows into the channel and down to the next step.

A native Ifugao house. The houses are elevated so rats and people can’t get in as easily.

Going into the house…. under the roof, people hang skulls of the animals (or people…. they were head hunters) they killed, and the wood is carved with animals and tons of other detail.

A craftsman making a wine bottle cover out of rattan, a grass.

Laundry, Ifugao style…. the red striped cloth on the left is called a G string and is worn by the men. More on those later!

Another view of Batad

A view from the middle of the terraces…. we walked out on the steps to get there. Don’t fall in…

Hiking out and across the Batad terraces…. most of the walk was like a balance beam. Derick said, “Mud on one side, mud and pain on the other.” I tried to always focus on the side with just mud….

A farmer covering newly planted seedlings. The Batad terraces are interesting because all the rice isn’t planted all at one time. So, you can see the plants at various stages of development. Makes the terraces look like a funny green patchwork.

We made it to the center!

Derick, on the edge of a terrace with a rice crop that’s already come up.

The little pink blobs are snail egg masses…. the snails eat the rice (bad) but people and fish eat the snails (good). Rats are another problem, since they also eat the seedlings.

This pretty decoration means “this is my rice terrace, stay off.”

A close up of a few native houses in Batad and some of the bigger terraces.

We walked across the whole hillside and down to this waterfall…. good day of carefully hiking (no one fell in the water!!) and walking up stairs.

Another method of irrigation and transferring water among the terraces….. the little hollowed out branch on the right is letting water from the higher one flow into the lower one.

The red plant helps to ward off evil spirits, while the white flags wave around and act as scarecrows for rice-eating rats.

Ed was all about the tricycles…. whereas I took the opportunity to remind myself of that one quote that goes “Do something every day that scares you.”

After hiking out of Batad, we passed by another small terrace village of Bangaan, where the government bought brown paint so everyone could paint their roofs the same color, for the benefit of pretty photos like this one.

Back in Banaue, meeting more family, watching an Ifugao dance and cultural show, shopping for g-strings, and stealing wooden bikes from children.

Back in Banaue with the tricycle…. a look down the Main Street.

One evening we went to an Ifugao dance and culture show, where we watched traditional dances and reenactments ceremonies, and learned about the traditional clothing. The wrap the guy is wearing is the g-string. 🙂 Ed met a few relatives who were performing, and we got all decked out after the show. Nice spear.

I got roped in too…. the dead bird head dress I’m wearing is actually for the guys…. but it was so cool!

More dress-up…. this time at viewpoint overlooking the “pyramid” rice terrace outside of Banaue.

At the viewpoint, the elders of the Ifugao tribe that Ed’s family is from get dressed up and take donations for photos. These guys are all around 95, and the blind man remembered Ed’s dad from when he lived there. It was super cool to hear them tell us about him. The women have bright red lips from chewing beetlenut…. a mixture of tobacco, calcium carbonate powder, a local leaf and a nut called beetlenut. Together these things turn bright red and the old folks chew it like candy.

Which of these g-strings is gonna make my ass look the best?? …Shopping for the traditional fabrics and blankets at the Banaue market.

Derick making an(other) exciting family introduction. Ed is related to this guy we saw at the market, but I can’t remember how.

So many varieties of rice

Another introduction…. this one made me cry. The woman on the right got so excited and her face just lit up when Derick explained (in the Ifugao language) who Ed was. She kept touching Ed’s face, and couldn’t get over how much he looked like his half brothers.

More family….

And another introduction…. these were not pre-arranged, we were visiting different places with Derick and he would make the introduction when we came across someone in the family.

We took a tricycle a short way up the mountain out of Banaue, to the village where Ed’s dad grew up, called Gohang. Beth (in yellow) who lives in Baguio came to meet us to say goodbye, since this was our last day in the mountains. So nice, especially since Banaue and Baguio are 6 hours apart by car.

Looking out on Mount Gano…. no really, that slope on the right side is land that belongs to the family. Derick currently oversees it and makes sure people don’t illegally harvest the trees.

In Gohang, Ed’s dad built a small house before moving to “the big city” of Banaue back in the 30s or 40s. The woman who lives there now told us about it, and showed us around. The original house is actually just the top story…. it was lifted, and a newer addition was added below.

The house Ed’s dad built, from the other side…. just the part sitting on top of the roof is original. The window on the far right used to be the front door.

We were able to go inside and upstairs to see the inside of the house…. Ed testing out a tiny bed in one of the tiny rooms. In the last 20 years, this house has been a place where peace corps volunteers in Ifugao stay for their 2-year assignments.

Along the way, I saw this kid on bike. Not just any bike…. this is an Ifugao wooden bike, and I wrote about these things in my Bonderman application essay. We pulled over in the tricycle so I could take a picture….

….. and then steal the bike from the poor kid for a few minutes. There’s a little foot brake in front, and the bike is carved with animals on the steer tube. There’s a festival every 3 years in april where they race these bikes…. we’re definitely coming back!!

weeeeeee!!!!

Money shot…. there are even rice terraces on the paper bills!

Ed found his people….. the Ifugao 2nd district civil engineering office. 🙂

Back in Manila, Ed had just a couple days before his flight. We hung out with the Manila family, and they kindly set me up with a whole condo unit to call home base for my last 2 weeks in the Philippines. The day after Ed went back to Seattle, I headed south to the island of Mindoro for more diving off Sabang beach in Puerto Galera.

Ed and cousin Evelyn at her house…. Evelyn’s mom is Ed’s aunt, on his mom’s side. She made a delicious peanut-based Kare-Kare soup for us…. no surprise it was amazing, she works as a chef and catering director at Hotel Sofitel Manila!!

The games kids play….. this is a spide fight. If you look, there are 2 small spiders on this stick, and when they meet each other, they fight. If your spider kills and eats the other kid’s spider. you win. Also, props to the kid w/ the biohazard shirt. 🙂

The condo I’m staying in is on the 27th floor, and I get a nice territorial view including the lovely Manila smog layer. #densestcityintheworld

The Philippines takes street food to a whole new level…. you can get a serving of one of these delicious one-pot wonders for less than 50 cents. It’s not always hot, but sometimes you put your tastebuds in front of GI hell risk factors.

I spent an afternoon walking around the campus of U of the Philippines…. nice to be among students again for awhile.

Lucky for me, Laura Newman introduced me to her friend and former roommate, Lourdes…. we met for dinner and were instant friends. Lourdes took me to a nice Filipino restaurant and afterward we swam laps in the pool at her condo. The nights are perfect for swimming here!

Filipino dishes…. coconut Laing, green papaya salad, fried catfish….

I decided to head back south, to a different beach and island (just 3 hrs away) to do some more scuba diving. This is Sabang beach, in Puerto Galera.

I found a small beachfront hotel/restaurant for a good deal, although this isthe first time in my trip I wish I’d made advance reservations. I had to move between two different hotels because rooms weren’t available, and I had to pay a little more than I wanted to/could have had I planned a little sooner. But, all was well and the diving was great.

Ninja camo wetsuit!!!

Jay, the divemaster…. there are lots of dive shops around, but there was no one else at the one run by my hotel. So I got a private dive guide, and got to pick where we went! I dove with two different shops on this trip, but only have pics of this one…. the other was good too, happy to talk more about options if youre thinking of diving in the PIs. Including all gear and air, I paid less than $30 per dive.

Moray eel…. there were tons of these!

There is nothing attractive about a regulator in your mouth.

Emperor angelfish

Hawksbill turtle…. pretty sure I saw this one in Galapagos 🙂

Oh the lionfish…. they’re super invasive in North America, but people aren’t as anxious to kill them off here since this is closer to their native habitat. I’m not sure how populations here have or haven’t changed.

Stonefish!! Glad I found this guy with my eyes, and not my hand…. they’ll kill ya

A ribbon eel…. it’s actually a moray…. it has its mouth open, and has funny yellow things coming off the top of its head.

Exploring the village of Sabang, beyond the beach…. mmm grilled street chicken….

Took a walk out into the neighborhoods and up to a lighthouse…. some houses I saw along the way.

One solution to the water problem (i.e. no fresh running water)…. These barrels are filled with water, from the rain, or maybe a truck? There are pumps propped on the top, and each house has a hose connected to one of the drums, and water is pumped in. Along the side of the road are tons of black hoses…. looks like a big mess of spaghetti but each hose brings water to a house.

The requisite “these kids want to see a digital pic of themselves” shot.

Bubble tea!!! This canadian expat, Ken, started this bubble tea shop and we ended up chatting for a couple of hours. I learned that the major industry in Sabang isn’t actually diving, it’s prostitution. I suspect there is some overlap between the two, since I saw a lot of old white men with cute Filipinas walking along the beach to thevarious dive resorts.

On my way back to Manila, I stopped in a town called Tagaytay, where another family member has a vacation house. Tagaytay is also famous for the Taal volcano, the tiniest volcano in the PIs, out in the middle of a lake. Brian, in the picture, takes care of the guest house and we hung out and cooked together in the evenings. He makes one hell of a chicken adobo….

Taal volcano, taken from a lookout point where I took a walk.

Dog in a tube!!!

Back in Manila, Ed’s cousin Ghia and I went to the original Magnolia store…. it’s a famous brand of Filipino ice cream. Ghia is a public health dentist so we had tons to talk about, in addition to our sweet teeth…. shhh don’t tell the dental patients.

Oh yes, we did. And it was amazing!!! Good thing I’m getting back on the bike next week….

I got to visit Hotel Sofitel where Ate Evelyin works…. she took me to the breakfast buffet…. oh god, it was heavenly. They had a country specific breakfast bar from China, Japan, PIs, Korea, France, in additiona to all the traditional breakfast food…. wowww.

Kel and Inte…. Kel did the sick paintjob on his scooter himself. Kel is Evelyn’s son, and Ghia’s cousin.

The Barangay-mobile! “Barangay” means “barrio” or neighborhood, and Ghia’s mom is the Barangay captain where they live in Manila.

And while I’ve been halfway around the world hardly working, UW decided to make things official. Thanks to Ed for sending the evidence…. the “D” is for Done!!

And now we’re up to date…. I just finished patching the holes in my cardboard bike box for the flight from here to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow. The flight is 2 hours, and cost $95… awesome!  When I get to HCM, our friend Phu’s aunt Hanh has graciously offered to pick me up and let me stay with her for a few days while I set up the bike and get my bearings.  The next phase will be a solid cycling trip…. I have until the first week in April to make it through south Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand and fly to Bangalore. There is a hilarious website called mrpumpy.net that I’m using for route inspiration…. other ideas/advice/experience is always welcome!  I have about 5 weeks and I think I can do it…. I hear the Mekong delta is pretty flat!!?  Stay tuned….

To the jungle and back

I made it into the rainforest, and back to tell about it!

Since New Year’s, I’ve been moving by bike (and a little bus, a little canoe….), slowly northeastward with the goal of visiting Parque Yasuni, the largest area of protected, primary rainforest in Ecuador (1.3 million hectares), with the highest recorded biodiversity in the world I’ve heard. I wanted to go far into the rainforest, preferrably with someone who knows it like their backyard, and see all I could in the span of a few days.  We all grow up with “The Amazon” in movies, books, Discovery Channel, and Tucans on cereal boxes, but I wanted the Full Monty.  All the amazing biology I’ve learned via professors, colleagues and powerpoint…. what does that look, sound and feel like? Did they actually do a good job making all those rainforest exhibits at all the natural history museums? Monkeys! Piranhas! A million kinds of ants!!!

So there was the goal…. the punchline is I camped in Yasuni, near the Peruvian border, for 4 days, with two of the lovliest and most knowledgeable local naturalists I could ever have asked for. And it was absolutely spectacular. Much more on that later, with pics of course…. you can see exactly where I was here, look for the eastern-most points, near the Peruvian border. The “how” of getting there was interesting in itself though too…. I did an experiment of sorts, and I’ll share some insights and tips that might be useful for anyone thinking of coming out to the Amazon with a little less time and flexibility than I’ve had. I’ve also had a lot of time to reflect and ask questions about the big petroleum industry presence I’ve seen along the way to Yasuni. More on that too.

The experiment was to see whether I could get to the rainforest as I wanted to, without making a reservation through an agency far in advance. I’m a really good planner and I could’ve had some kind of reservation in the bag over a month ago in Quito, where there are lots of agency offices, and you can sign up far in advance because “Groups are filling up! You can’t just show up and find someone!”  Not following this advice is counter to a number of my core personality traits, so that’s why this was experimental. 🙂 But Ideally, I wanted to meet the person/guide I would go with, and I didn’t want to go with someone who spent a lot of time in Quito and not the jungle. I also wanted to avoid staying at one of the many lodges available, just because they tend to be expensive. Many are run by indigenous communities and provide income from ecotourism, so I’m all about the lodges if that had been of interest and in my price range.

As of New Year’s my plan was to bike east to the town of Puyo, on the western side of El Oriente, the Amazon region of Ecuador. From Puyo, I thought, I’ll find some information or a guide, and make some kind of plan. From Puyo, I would be less than a day by bus away from the major river ports where you can take canoes into Yasuni, so I would be mobile and could act on any new information.

Pics from the road to Puyo, some cool things I saw there,  and all the rain…. I learned it’s not called a RAINforest for nothing. After coming down to Puyo from Banos, you are officially in “El Oriente”, or the jungle.

Leaving Banos on a fantastic road through the mountains and down to El Oriente, or the rainforest. Always a good sign when you see these on the road…

Parts of the Banos-Puyo road went through dark tunnels, which isn’t super safe for bikes plus cars. But, they had made these “ciclovias” just for bikes, that skirt around the tunnels and had great views.

Passing through a pueblo on the way to Puyo, met this guy who was working on lunch for the restaurant. We talked about visiting the Amazon, and about chocolate…. at this point, it started to rain, and I think I didn’t dry off for the next 5 days. I learned “Puyo” means cloudy in Kichwa.

Arrived in Puyo… best street lamps ever!!! I found a nice but cheap hotel, and tried to figure out what to do next, in order to visit Yasuni.

Took a walk around the town, and on a trail along the river. I found the Omaere Ethnobotanical Center, and walked in for a tour. The center is run by a Shuar traditional healer and her American husband Chris. (The Shuar are one group of indigenous people in the ecuadorian amazon). This is a traditional Shuar house, made from a type of palm wood and fronds. I learned tons about their culture, and went on a walk through their 300 hectares of space, planted with traditional medicinal plants.

This is cinnamon, or Canela, in Spanish! The bark is used for cinnamon powder, but you can chew the leaves and they taste like sweet cinnamon candy.

Cool stick bug at Omaere ethnobotanical center.

Chris demonstrating the use of this fruit for traditional body paint. You have heard of it before… it’s also called Annatto. 🙂

Another day in Puyo, I went out for a bikeride (in the rain, of course), and found a sign for this indigenous kichwa community where you can visit to learn more about Kichwa culture.

Following the sign into the community, across a bridge…

I met a baby spider monkey! Sorry it’s not available for adoption, already gave it to my sis for her birthday. 🙂

Also met this Macaw…

And some Argentinean students who were staying here a few days as part of an extended tour. I asked if I could join them for lunch, and Maria (a grandmother, who was doing the cooking) made me a plate too. Trout, Yucca, rice, tomatoes.

Maria and her granddaughter, in front of the board where each family in the community displays and sells their handcrafts. The jewelery is made from seeds and parts of rainforest plants, and the pottery from the red clay dirt that’s characteristic of this area.

At this point, I’m in Puyo, and all the planning I had done for the Amazon trip was that I had the phone number of a guide that I got from someone I met in an agency in Quito.  I had messaged him a few times, but communication was sparse… I was hoping to find another option.  And other options showed up, just from wandering around the town a few days.

For example, Chris from the Omaere center had built some urine-diverting dry toilets there, as a way to show that you can deal with human waste in a stink-free manner without dumping it directly into the river (Amazon tributary).  Sadly, this is what currently happens… human waste goes right in the river, toilet paper is kept separate and thrown in the trash. Chris had worked with a few communities out in Yasuni previously, and had built a few of these new toilets in hopes that they would catch on, at least with the ecotourists. We ended up talking for several hours, and founds lots of scientific interests in common, and I went back to learn more about how the dry toilets worked. Turns out Chris had been looking for a volunteer to follow up on the toilets out near Yasuni, and I said I’d be happy to do the poo recon if there was a place for me to stay and eat while I was there.  Also at Omaere, I met Taruka (also goes by Luis), who gives tours of the medicinal plants on site, but is also a guide in Yasuni and takes people out to visit the rainforest.

Huzzah! Two fantastic people, and two different opportunities to visit Yasuni!  All I had to do was… wait.  Chris needed to contact the communities to ask if they would be open to a volunteer visit, and Taruka needed to wait for a 3 more people to be interested in a visit to Yasuni, to bring the price down.  I had decided early on after doing some research and looking at a Rough Guide that I was ok paying $75/day or less for a trip.  This has to cover food, lodging, park fees and gas for the motor canoe for both me and the guide, and anyone else who goes along, in addition to the part that goes to the families to support further ecotourism activities.  In the meantime, the other guide (Jhon) who I had messaged earlier with mixed luck started writing, saying he could also take me out to Yasuni. Another thing I learned is that everyone and their uncle is a “guide”… anyone will take you out to the jungle, and it was easier than I thought to find people who would do it. It’s not so easy to decide who to go with, or why you would choose one person over another!

The point of all this text is to give you an idea of what happens when you don’t just reserve something in an office in Quito.  I decided I would wait another 4-5 days, and if the options with Chris and Taruka didn’t work out, I would meet Jhon and go to Yasuni with him.  I was going to just wait in Puyo, but there was too dang much rain so I got on my bike (in the rain) and left, heading north and east toward the port towns of Misahualli and Coca where I would need to take a motor canoe to Yasuni anyway.  I was in contact with everyone by email and phone, and the rain let up after I left.

Thankfully, these little shelters popped up every so often so I could dry off and rest a bit.

These were interesting… the provincial government built these nice vendor stalls with grills and shelters, presumably for people to have a space to sell food and other things along the roadside. Economic develompent in action, I thought. I was confused tho because it was a weekday and every single one was empty… there were many along the road. Good idea, bad execution maybe? These weren’t in dense pueblos, but rather in open areas with not much else… I’d guess they just wouldn’t get enough business with the amount of traffic. Note this was a weekday afternoon too.

My first flat tire!!!! Front tire went PSSSSS really loud as I was going downhill… bike wobbled a lot, I thought I would crash. I was able to stop without falling though, and miraculously the rain stopped as I started to change the flat. Note to others… I was using a super thick thorn-resistant tube, but the flat was caused by the valve stem ripping away from the rubber, no thorn involved. The defect was serious enough for me that I replaced the bulky tube with a regular old tube and it’s been fine so far.

Stopping at Shangri-La for a snack…

These trees are all over the Oriente… I liked how they were all curvy and spindly.

Since I was still killing time waiting to decide which way I would get to Yasuni, I took a detour and rode to Misahualli for 2 days. This is the western-most port on the Rio Napo, which goes into Yasuni, and all the way to Iquitos, Peru if you want to go that far. The road I took to Misahualli was very nicely paved… cutting through the rainforest that needed “saving” 10 years ago. Now there are cows grazing, and you can buy property along the road with electricy and light! There are signs along the road that remind you how much the petroleum industry has helped this area to grow.

First thing I did in Misahualli was grab a motor canoe to visit a place where cacao trees grow and you can see the first parts of the chocolate-making process.

No one was at the cacao farm, so I visited a kichwa community instead, and held their boa constrictor in honor of Skeletor. May he rest in peace!

Redfoot tortoise

Kids playing volleyball

School group going to catch a canoe in Misahualli

I spent some time in Misahualli, still waiting to hear back from either Chris or Taruka about the visit to Yasuni, either to check on the dry toilets or visit communities living in Yasuni. The coolest thing I did in Misahualli was to visit a small forest reserve where you can learn about cacao trees and roast your own beans.  It ended up being an awesome walk through the jungle with a local guy named Claudio, who took me out all by myself on a curated jungle tour.  And the chocolate was delicious. 🙂

Arriving by canoe for the chocolate tour

Local guide Claudio, lives in a Kichwa community just up the river.

The big brown lumps on the trees are termite houses… made from excreted digested wood. Claudio told me that Kichwas use these termite houses as mosquito repellent… they are brittle and you can rub the pulverized termite excrement on your skin.

Termites, up close!

This is… cilantro!? Yep, tastes and smells like it, but looks very different from what I’m used to!

The flower of the cacao tree… litttle baby cacao pods…

A young palm frond used for making baskets, headdresses and sometimes roofs.

You can eat the young palm hearts too. Thanks for the nice head crown, Claudio.

This tree is called a Matapalo, and it’s essentially a parasite… it started as a vine, enveloping another tree and now it’s huge and has these awesome giant roots. In the center of themess is another tree that was taken over.

There are tons of vines in the jungle…

Cool butterfly

A cacao pod! I learned there are afew types of cacao tree, and the red and yellow varieties are used for their beans for making chocolate. This is a pod from a yellow cacao tree.

Inside the pod, are the beans, covered in a white fruity pulp. That stuff was really sweet and delicious… I had no idea. Maybe I learned that on the Theo tour in Seattle, but forgot.

When you really make cacao, you have to remove the white pulp, allow the beans to ferment 3 days and then dry off. Since I didn’t have that time, Claudio had some already fermented and dried beans, sorta like a cooking show.

Roasting the dried beans over a fire

You stir them constantly, till they start to crackle like popcorn. Note I’m still eating the sweet cacao pulp… 🙂

Roasted beans, after about 15 min.

After roasting, you remove the hulls and save the beans inside.

bowl full of roasted, hulled beans.

Then, you grind the beans in a mill, and that’s your cacao powder.

Best hot chocolate ever… mix the ground beans with milk and some sugar and you’re done.

More fermenting cacao beans on the side of the road… these are light colored, probably were just put out that day. Note the sign for the lot available in the background… you could move to the jungle and make c acao too!!

Biking across the bridge in Misahualli… getting ready to head farther north to Tena.

After Misahualli, I biked further north to Tena, another small town where you can grab tours to the jungle and find guides to take your rafting and whitewater Kayaking. I didn’t realize this, but this part of Ecuador has apparently the best whitewater kayaking in all of South America.  I spent a few days in Tena at a hostel with a kitchen so I could cook myself some vegetables… miss those things!! Still having fun, killing time waiting to figure out the Yasuni trip. In Tena, I biked out to some caves, and went on another bikeride with a Belgian woman I met at the hostel. Took lots of pics of what I call the “Petro-burbs.”

The oil-Amazon situation is a complicated one, and I’ve made an effort to talk with as many people as I can about what’s happening and how they feel about it. Essentially, petroleum companies bring money, schools, medical care and infrastructure to the Amazon and the indigenous communities who live there.  The communities in turn must choose… to accept these new resources and permit oil extraction and river pollution, or to refuse (which is often difficult politically).  By accepting all the help, the community can grow, people can live longer, and in time the need for resources to support this larger population will probably outweigh what the rainforest can provide. Things will not look the same here in 10, 20 or 50 years, but this sounds like the story of all humanity, right?

I talked to one indigenous man who said “hell yes, bring in the petrol!” Correa, the president of Ecuador, actually has helped to bring it much more money from Petroleum… only 5% of the value of the oil used to come back to Ecuador, and now it’s 50%. So, much more money than before is coming into the country in exchange for disrupting the most biodiverse primary ecosystems on earth. This sounds like fantastic, long overdue progress to me, but seems to miss the bigger picture.  Paraphrasing the guy further… Look what petrol has done for us… ecotourism and conservation can’t even touch that kind of influence. We live here, it’s our decision, you tourists and conservationists should stay out. What happens to the jungle and our culture is our business.

While this guy had a loud voice and a lot to say to me (kind of an aggressive rant, actually), others I spoke with had a more nuanced perspective. They seemed more  concerned about the loss of a culture that depends on the intact rainforest, and acknowledged the role of the rainforest for the rest of the earth, and not just the people who live there.  As a wealthy tourist myself, I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to suddenly have access to the modern, expensive, petrol-provided goods and services that you see others around you and in the media enjoying. I can’t imagine having to decide to deny my community the resources that could really improve their health and education, in order to refuse oil company influence.  I also can’t and won’t shake my ingrained systems-level, big picture mindset that sacrificing Yasuni for a finite amount of oil is short sighted and a bad decision. There have been a number of proposed solutions, including a less invasive way of extracting oil (I don’t know much about this, or if it’s even possible), and President Correa’s proposal a few years ago to stop all oil extraction if the rest of the world would collectively pay the value of half the oil in Yasuni. But, the rest of the world didn’t rally…

So these were the thoughts going through my head as I kept moving closer to Yasuni… no solutions, just more questions…

Coming into Tena… confluence of two rivers. Neat little town, had a real italian espresso shop with gelato. 🙂

Outdoor kitchen at my hostel… kitchen wasn’t very well equipped and the fridge didn’t work, but cool setting and garden.

Cool heliconia flower in the garden at the hostel. I swear it’s real!

Tour of Cuevas Jumandy… the story is that indigenous Kichwas hid and escaped the Spanish in this huge cave system.

Huge hole under the waterfall!

Olivia, my Belgian friend, rented a bike and we went for a spin on a secondary road outside of Tena.

This was the nicest “secondary road”I think I’ve been on so far… if you look at the road sign, it asks you to remember that petroleum companies have put a X dollars into improving this community. These signs are pretty common.

The petro-burb project ends here for now, apparently… that’s the old road in the distance.

We biked up the old road a ways and saw this hombre with his chainsaw… didn’t get a chance to talk with him, but how Captain Planet is this picture??

New housing development along the new road.

Rainbow truck!!! Had to include this one… and rainbows here do not mean the same thing as rainbows where we live, my friends. There is a local election coming up, and each candidate has a flag. Supporters fly their candidates flag from their cars and houses… the rainbow flag is for a Kichwa candidate, since a checkered rainbow array is also a symbol of Andean culture here.

After I had been in Tena a few days, my self-imposed waiting time was over, and I had not heard from Chris or Taruka about going with either of them to Yasuni. So, I called Jhon, told him I was game, and that I’d be in Coca tomorrow, ready to take a motor canoe the next day. I met Jhon in Coca, the biggest port on the Napo river, and he was kind enough to let me store my bicycle and gear at his house while I spent 4 days in Yasuni.  The day I got there though, he wasn’t feeling well, so he said he would talk with a few other guide friends and see what he could do.  I got a little nervous at this point, but I had plenty of time if there was going to be another delay. I’ve also been here long enough to know that things were going to work out. When there’s work, people take it, and no one really plans much in advance. 🙂

The new plan was that I would take a canoe all the way to Nuevo Rocafuerte (8 hrs away by motor canoe, near the Peruvian border) and start a 4 day visit from there, with a guy named Fernando who lives out there. This would be a trip into Yasuni with a naturalist, not to any community because no one lives in that part of Yasuni I would bring a few chickens for us to eat, since there aren’t chickens out there apparently. This is when things got awesome, and I’m grateful for all the serendipity and whatever that had to happen for me to end up camping in Yasuni with Fernando and his wife. It was literally a private amazon tour, just for me… for the price I had originally decided I wanted to pay.  Felt more like camping with some good friends, and less like some kind of arranged tour, can’t say enough about it.

Leaving the town of Coca in a motor canoe… 8 hours to Nuevo Rocafuerte where I met Fernando! The guy in the pic is Jhon (the guide from coca who wasn’t feeling well enough to lead a trip), and in the box are 2 chickens so we could have a little culinary variety while camping.

The inside of the canoe… pretty comfy, actually! Because it’s a boat and has to be balanced, there was no center aisle, but rather a central zig-zag… every other row had 1 seat on the left, 2 on the right. The other rows had the opposite, so you had to wind your way up to the front to get off.

Leaving Coca…

The canoe made a bunch of stops along the way, to pick up and drop off people who live and visit the communities along the Rio Napo.

Big trucks on big barges… past a certain point going eastward, there are no roads and the river is the main transport conduit

Community along the Napo

Downtown Nuevo Rocafuerte on a wednesday night!! The river is just to the left of the picture.

Nuevo Rocafuerte is about 10 min by canoe from the Peruvian border… you can take the Rio Napo all the way to Iquitos, and into the main Amazon river if you want. But first, you have to go through customs and immigration.

Loading up Fernando and his wife Leysa’s canoe for the camping trip. We’ll be gone 4 days, 3 nights and it’s just Fernando, Leysa, me, and their 10 year old nephew Richard. F and L live in N. Rocafuerte, but Richard and his sister and mom are in town visiting from Peru.

Meet Richard… this pic about sums up his 10-going-on-25 personality. A guy of few words, but nice and really helpful on the boat. This kid will be guiding your kids’ visits to the Amazon in 15 years, folks…

All our gear, as seen from the middle of the canoe. These c anoes are each 12 meters long and have canopies and side coverings for when it rains (and it did)…

To get into the protected Yasuni park, you motor up to the peruvian border on the Rio Napo (but not across the border), and then take a right onto the Yasuni River, a smaller tributary. After about half hour, you enter the park. The water is a silty brown here on the Yasuni as it is on the Napo, from all the tanins and clay soil. The Napo is much more polluted though, because it’s the main transportation route, sewer, and industrial dump site in the area. The Yasuni flows into the Napo from inside the park.

Here’s a map of Yasuni, and there different areas that are inhabited by different groups (who had been living there before 1959 when the park officially came to be). We were heading to a lake on the farthest right side of the green area. No one lives in this area.

A zoomed-in view of where I was… the part that says “Lag. Jatuncocha” indicates the lake where we camped. You are not permitted to keep going much further on the Rio Yasuni because there are two indigenous groups known as “no contactados.”In other words, these are groups who have indicated that they wish to have no contact with the outside world and are not to be visited.

Arrived at Lake Jatuncocha, to an established campsite accessible by canoe.

Leysa setting up the kitchen… just like camping at home!

Laguna Jatuncocha… just to give you an idea of the vistas. The lake was like glass much of the time, and we spent lots of time motoring all around, looking for birds and critters through the binoculars. Binoculars for me… Fernando could see things I couldn’t even find WITH binocs…

From my perch at the front of the canoe

Back at the campsite, I found some cool bugs almost immediately!

And a lizard! This is most likely a plica plica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plica_plica), Thanks to Amanda T. for that ID!

After setting up camp, we went fishing… for piranhas!! To catch them I had a long stick with a piece of line tied to the end, probably no more than 10 ft of line. To catch them, you have to violently splash the water with the rod tip, so they think something big and delicious fell in the water. For bait, we used chunks of beef. They bit almost immediately, and consistently… I eventually caught 2 but it was hard to get them outta the water before they chowed all the bait. Leysa caught 2 more, so there was one for each of us for dinner.

Looka’those choppers!!!

Richard came fishing too… he didn’t catch one the first day, but I swear he had a rod in the water every time we were on the boat after that! By day 3 he caught dinner all on his own.

Leysa cooked up the fishies that night and they were delicious… fried with salt and lemon, with an avocado and plantains.

Fernando had the awesome idea to save the teeth, and let the ants clean out all the remaining skin and flesh. His n’ hers piranha teeth… awww, you know Ed can’t wait for this sweet present.

Dinner guest… a saltamonte en Espanol.

Here’s another liana called ‘Escaleras de Diablo’ or Devil’s stairway.

Fernando with a macaw feather… the other side of the feather is blue! Fernando didn’t seem to like being in pictures (he never looked at the camera much), but I can’t say enough about this guy. He was professional but fun, and was always up for talking and answering questions about the forest and wildlife. If he didn’t know something, he said he didn’t know, but the guy knew just about everything I wanted to ask. Usually “hospitality” and “camping”don’t belong in the same sentence, but Fernando made it happen… down to drying off the canoe seat cushion whenever I got in the boat, he was all about every single detail. He brought the binoculars, the Ecuador bird ID book, and boots for walking in the mud.

This dead tree is where a huge group of parrots congregates at about 7am every morning. The soil here is unusually mineral rich, and the parrots come here to chew and lick the minerals from the tree. Fernando told me that these areas of soil and subsequently of mineral-rich trees are rare, once every 100 hectares or so? So we got to see a big group of parrots one morning. My camera sucks for wildlife shots, which is why you don’t see any parrots here. 🙂

Centipedes!!

Here, fernando is chopping into the bark of a fallen tree, a special type of palmera with dark bark, where a certain type of beetle comes to lay its eggs. The beetle needs a dead tree, with some kind of existing scar on the bark. Three months after the beetle lays its eggs, you can cut into the bark and find…

These!! These are late-stage beetle larvae, or gusanos. Gusanos, it turns out, are delicious.

So, we collected all the gusanos we could from that tree, and brought them back to Leysa where she took out their intestines so the fatty larvae could fry in their own grease along with some garlic and salt.

Pretty sure I ate most of the ones we collected… the fried final product is in the right-hand bowl. The heads were slightly crunchy, a nice juxtaposition of textures. #junglefoodsnob. Leysa did all the cooking and it was fantastic… espcially since she’s actually a professional nurse and is working with Francisco until her Ecuadorian work visa comes in (she is from Peru). It was fun to talk about diseases from someone who treats them in the rainforest.

This was the funniest bird I saw on the trip, and there were lots of them so I could get a few pictures. It’s called a Hoatzin, and it has been given its own genus and suborder since its evolutionary placement is still a bit mysterious. It is completely vegetarian, and uses bacterial fermentation in its crop (like cattle) to digest its food. Amazing.

These ants have a symbiotic relationship with the stem of this plant, and if you didn’t know to look, you’d never guess the plant was full of ants. Incidentally, the ants taste like lemon… we ate a bunch.

Tree called “sangre de gallina”or blood of the chicken.. Kichwas use the red sap for medicinal purposes.

Tons of epiphytes all over… this was a particularly big and cool one. The tree and vines underneath support the growth of the leafy plant that doesn’t require soil.

The widest, tallest tree in this part of the Amazon… called the Saebo. I’m standing between two of its roots.

Looking straight up the Saebo tree from between the roots…

From the river, the Saebo is the tall round spreading crown in the pic.

Fernando is a pro canoe navigator… we went through some small streams that led out of the lake to find cool spots to walk around.

Little frog I found… Apparently these get very large and very delicious for the Kichwas who eat them.

This scalloped-looking tree is called “Remocaspi”, or Oar Tree in Kichwa. Each scallop in the tree is used to make an oar for a canoe.

And for the final night of camping, we went out and looked for Caiman! (In case I forgot to mention, we did not swim in this lake…). Basically, you go out quietly in the canoe with a headlamp, and look for orange eyes that show when the light hits them. The caimans are a bit stunned by the light, so Fernando was able to pick one up right out of the water.

This is a black caiman, pretty small about 3 years old. There are two other types that live in the lake and rivers here.

On the way out of Yasuni, we stopped at the border so I could say I had been to Peru. This sign says “Welcome to the republic of Ecuador.” After we got back to Rocafuerte, Fernando dropped me off at a hostel and went to reserve me a ticket for the motor canoe back to Coca the next morning.

Fernando and Leysa Sifuentes don’t have a website, and although they find visitors through a few different agencies, you may not get a particular guide if you book through an agency in Quito.  If you’re thinking of visiting Ecuador, or want to visit the Amazon with a naturalist guide in general, shoot Fernando an email at sifuentes.fede@gmail.com.  Or email me for his cell phone number… much faster way to get ahold of people here!

In the end, I think my experiment worked (although I didn’t do a control so we’ll never know).  I didn’t book early, and I had a great experience.  I learned that while some things here you can just show up and do, other things take a bit more time, and often you have no idea what kind of experience you’re getting yourself into, even if you think you have it down.  I’m not sure I’ll ever have the chance to bum around for almost 2 weeks waiting to set up “my perfect trip” like this again, so in the future I think I’ll spend more time and energy in advance, looking for referrals and references from other people, like the one I’ve just written here.

After the long canoe ride back to Coca, I spent a few days in that town doing some work on the internet… I came back to a bunch of required paperwork for my new postdoc at CDC. I also got to edit the proofs of our manuscript that will be published soon… overall, pretty good reasons to spend a few days in a sweaty internet cafe.  I left Coca by bus, just to get me up a couple thousand meters before I started biking back toward Quito.  I stopped in a little village called Papallacta, and enjoyed an evening at a hot spring and some trout for dinner. Of all the different Ecoregions in Ecuador, I think I like the Andes the most for cycling.

I’m now in Tumbaco, a suburb of Quito, preparing to leave Ecuador next week.  I’m staying at a Casa de Ciclistas… essentially the home of a wonderfully kind guy named Santiago, and his family. Santiago runs a business reparing high-end mountain bikes out of his house, and he has a place for wanderers with bikes to stop, rest and camp… accommodations are sparse, but it’s great to spend time with other cyclists, and Santiago and his family are saints for having random strangers around all the time. They don’t charge for staying as long as you like, but contributing some cash for the water and electric bill is definitely a good idea. If you’re in Ecuador and looking for this place, email me for Santiago’s phone number. It’s apparently googleable too, but I wasn’t able to find it easily.

Jorge and his wife ilde, who run a nice but cheap hotel in Papallacta. Ilde made me breakfast, and Jorge offered to drive me up to the top of the pass (About 4000 meters), but I said no thanks I gotta ride!

Ride I did… almost 4 hrs straight up, and then straight down to Tumbaco. Before leaving Papallacta, I stopped for some air in my tires and a few guys in a public works truck gave me this flower. How nice!

it’s always nice to look back at where you’ve been, every so often… I rode up from just next to that lake. And this was not even the top!!

Made it to Tumbaco, to the Casa de Ciclistas! Santiago is next to me, along with Alle and Irene, a couple from Holland.

Another view from the ride on the MTB burke gilman trail in Tumbaco

The digs for ciclistas at Santiago’s… the toilet is on the left, sink in themiddle, and shower on the right. Oh and all my laundry hanging up in front…

So here I am, counting down the days til my flight on Feb 4th to Manila. I realized too that the Bonderman is almost exactly half over… the 4 month mark is February 2nd.  I’m excited, but sad to be leaving at the same time, and a little scared to be going to countries where I speak none of the language.  This is definitely the longest post yet, and probably/hopefully you won’t see another one this long again!  It has been fantastic to spend so long in S. America and to take things as fast or slow as I’ve wanted. I get the sense that this will definitely seem luxurious over the next 4 months, when I’ll be visiting 4 or 5 different countries and flying with the bike more often. We’ll see what happens… the itinerary up next is Philippines, Vietnam-Cambodia-Thailand whirlwind, South India, and finally Turkey.  Next post will be from the eastern hemisphere!

On the road again, Amazon-ho! (slowly)

Since leaving Galapagos, I spent some quality beach time on the coast with Ed, and have headed back north into the mountains to see more of the Ecuador I screamed through on the way south to visit the islands. I had been off the bike for almost 3 weeks when I started back up, so I picked a random small town on the panamerican highway at about 10,000 feet of altitude, and grabbed a bus from Guayaquil to get there. The altitude profile on the  GPS Ed gave me for Christmas told me I made the right decision to wuss out and take the bus up there.  The pueblo I picked was called Guamote, an indigenous community a bit over 200 km south of Quito.There I spent a little less than 24 hours trying to shake the altitude headaches and prepare to keep riding north and eventually east to the Ecuadorian Amazon.

After leaving Guamote, a few of the highlights (in picture galleries below) include… spending a night with the firefighters of Cajabamba, meeting and adopting Fausto’s (my Galapagos guide) family in Riobamba, Christmas with an American transplant family in Ambato, and returning to Riobamba to burn stuffed dummies and dance in the street for new years. I´m in the touristy mountain town of Baños right now, and will keep heading east toward Amazonas tomorrow morning.

Guamote to Cajabamba, first stay with the Bomberos…

In Puerto Lopez, we went to the beach around 5pm when you can buy fish from the guys who caught em! We went back to our hostel to cook the fish, and they were amazing. While we cooked, we were entertained by a clearly schizophrenic German woman, who explained her job as a military operative, based at our hostel. She taught us that the Ecuadorian military used special combat spiders, which use light to kill each other. She also told us that SARS was engineered by the French, and no, my PhD in microbiology does not qualify me to refute the biology behind said engineering.

This is a guy selling Tuna from his bike!! Ed estimates these to be worth at least a hundred bucks…

Arrived in the cobbly streets of Guamote! I was walking around looking for something to eat, but people didnt seem interested in talking to me. Maybe I looked more stoned than I thought, after going from zero to 10,000 ft in about 5 hours.

Next day… I hit the road north, about 40 km from Guamote to Cajabamba. Definitely felt the altitude but it was good to be back on the bike. This part of the panamerican was really quiet, with big shoulders too.

Stopping for some air in the tires…

Mountain agriculture… the province of Chimborazo is a mountainous area near the volcano with the same name. Potatoes and fava beans (called habas) are mainly grown here.

Even Ecuador has ‘Don’t text and drive’ billboards. Thanks, from all the random bikers on the panamerican…

Some pig.

The Bomberos’ parking lot and locker area. I arrived in Cajabamba around 2pm, and the only affordable hotel didn’t open until 6pm or so. I learned from Merilee and Eric that the Bomberos (firefighters) are a safe place to go when you get to a new town, and often have a place to crash. I went to find them, even if just a place to go until the hotel opened, and they were cool and had a spare bed.

My sleeping bag on one bed, and firefighting things on the other. The Bomberos were really nice, although the fire station was a bit like a frat house for older guys. Most disgusting bathroom Ive seen yet on the trip, and the running water stopped running at 7pm. I was this close to packing up and going to the hotel after it opened, even though it was dark out. But, it was too good a story in the making that I had to stay. The bed was comfy, and the guy who uses the other one didnt end up staying so I had a room to myself. To turn the light on, I took two wires sticking out of the wall, and touched them together.

The next morning, the Bomberos were kind enough to be in a picture, after they all tried riding my bike. The fire chief gave me this red poncho, after I helped him a bit to learn how to use the internet to find online courses. He is interested in running for public office, and wants to study political science. He asked if I could help him do that. At first I wasn’t sure what I could do, but then I realized I could introduce him to Coursera, a system of free, online college courses. Most of the time I spent upgrading his browser and finding a web-based translator that would work on his poor old computer. I hope at least some of that was useful.

The road coming into Riobamba, after saying goodbye to the bomberos. Decided to take the scenic route, per the GPS cycling route. Been using Open Street Maps and its great, although sometimes it takes you through fields and mud pits. Mud pit not shown here, but it was in this area. Tanja would be proud!

Riobamba, the week before Christmas…

I arrived in Riobamba and was welcomed by Jose and Marisol, and their family. Jose is Fausto´s brother, and I´m grateful for the invitation to visit them at their home outside of the city proper. Jose runs two farms that grow Tomates de Arbol, or tree tomatoes. He tooke me to visit them both.

This year is an especially tough one for the Tomates… there’s not much rain, and Jose spends much of his time moving and repairing the irrigation hoses.

Tomates de Arbol look like tomatoes, but they’re really sweet on the inside and have a tougher husk that you don’t really want to eat. You can get jugo de Tomate de Arbol at most of the little juice stands in Ecuador and Colombia.

This is Beatriz, Jose and Fausto’s mother and Nathaly, Jose and Marisol´s daughter. The little guys are Cuys (guinea pigs), who do not have names because one day they will be lunch.

One night we made mojitos and they were delightful.

I went with Marisol to this public presentation/gathering about water for irrigation. Public works officials from the city and province were there, and the blue objects on stage are the improved irrigation technologies that the community wants to better distribute the little irrigation water available. From what I could understand, the city officials were supportive and the people in attendance felt good about the progress that could be made. At one point, a bunch of kids got up on stage to do a dance and thank the mayor for a computer given to their school. All in all, an interesting even to watch even if I didn´t understand a lot of it…

Cutie pie eating chips at the irrigation water event.

Another day, I helped to catch and prepare a chicken for a soup for lunch. Marisol keeps chickens, and for all my talk about wanting to know where my food comes from, I had never really participated in the process from the beginning. Vegetarians may not want to look at the next 5 images or so, although none are particularly graphic.

The awkwardness in this picture probably captures how I was feeling… simultaneously shocked and proud that I had actually managed to catch the chicken, but also on the verge of tears. I didn’t take a picture, but after I caught the chicken we brought it to the front of the house where Marisol killed it by breaking its neck with her hands. What a woman… I watched, but wouldn´t have been able to do it myself.

About 5 minutes post mortem… the dog Nena was getting excited at this point.

De-feathering… this took me a long time. First, because I’m a noob, and second because it turns out having only one full-length thumb presents a disadvantage when plucking. Boiling water helps, and at one point, Marisol held the chicken butt over the open flame, which also helped to loosen the tail feathers!

This chicken had an unlaid egg inside… bonus!

And, fast forward to the soup. It was delicious, and I think I ate more off the bone in my soup bowl than I probably ever have…

Marisol crocheting her shoe to repair it. The dog ate the original sandal, so she crocheted brand new straps.

Beatriz and I out for a walk on one of the roads near the house. Beethoven the pup came along. Beatriz was like a grandma to me while I was there… we cooked together, and she took care of me when I had a fever. She has worked on farms and with livestock her whole life, and her hands are rugged and painful a lot of the time.

After our walk, we shucked some corn from the back yard. The cobs are a lot smaller, and each kernel a lot bigger than Im used to.

Since it was a few days before Christmas, I went with Nathaly to the Pase del Niño parade, where school groups perform dances in formation, with lots of traditional dresses and costumes, and traditional music. This is Naely, Nathaly´s cousin, who was performing with her class.

Pretty dresses…

Clown dancing

This was hilarious.

I have a video of this kid in the front, in orange… so cute.

These poor kids… the parade lasted over 3 hours! I would feel like this guy too after dancing for so long…

I noticed a little bike signage during the parade…

Indigenous man with his bike, saw him after the parade finished.

Back on the road to visit Wendy Marshall and family for Christmas, in Ambato

On the panamerican again, 62km from Riobamba to Ambato. This sign reminds you to conserve water, because it is life.

Some cheezy poofs made a decent road snack… also got these from the fire chief in Cajabamba.

I arrived in Ambato Dec 23rd, in time to be kindly welcomed into all kinds of family Christmas activities. Wendy is from Michigan, and moved to Ecuador after high school and has lived in one country or the other ever since. She has been in Ecuador now 17 years, and two of her 5 grown children live in Ambato too. Her daughter Marnie is my friend in Seattle, and I am grateful to have the chance to spend Christmas with her fam! This picture is Wendy´s grandson´s preschool play.

Making caramel for caramel corn on Christmas day… Wendy on the left, and her son Brian´s wife Natalia on the right. Waiting for hard ball phase… 260 degrees!

caramel meets corn… the serious, time-sensitive part of the protocol…

Grandma’s caramel corn recipe, if these pics made you want some!

The grandkids, patiently waiting to open stockings on christmas morning! Super cute.

After christmas, Wendy took me to the Ambato department of health where I was able to talk with a TB epidemiologist. Not only was he a TB epidemiologist, but he was the only epidemiologist in Ambato. Here’s a bulletin board describing how TB is tested in this clinic, and data comparing different modes of testing.

On the road again… I got off the main highway to ride through some smaller towns from Ambato to Baños on Dec 28th.

Eastward to Baños, and a quick trip back to Riobamba for new year’s.

Between Ambato and Baños, I stayed in a small town called Patate, where I have some other Bomberos to thank for showing me to a hotel. There was none in town, and when I asked the Bomberos, the chief actually took me and my bike a little ways out of town where there was a nice, cheap hotel/restaurant.

Of all coincidences, there were two other bikers staying at this hotel too! Karlos and Monica are from Quito, and were heading to Puyo as well. We biked together to Baños, where I stopped and they continued on. In this pic, we´re drinking chicha de uva, something inbetween grape juice and wine…

Me, after hiking up the mountiain behind the town of Baños. You can see my hostel somewhere down there… Baños is a small touristy town where you can visit hot springs and do ‘adventure tourism’ like ziplines, go-kart rental, river rafting and horseriding. I went to two of the 5 hotsprings, and they were nice but so crowded I probably wouldn’t go again. Even when I went at 5:30am, like people told me, to avoid the crowds, the place was packed.

A calla lily on my hike…

It started to rain whileI was hiking, and so I ducked into this green house that grew…. Tomates de Arboles! You can see their rainwater collection system just outside the door. I admit here to pilfering two delicious tomates while waiting out the rain.

After my hike, I met a carpenter guy on the street (who, was also missing his thumb! although he lost way more than I did…), who sent me to visit these two: Biologists Diana and Juan Pablo, who run a foundation for study and conservation of Andean Tapirs. (Its the animal in the mural!)

Juan Pablo has published a number of papers both on Tapirs and on the discovery of new frog species in this area of the Ecuadorian mountains.

To my delight, the foundation also works in science education too. Diana helped to make this workbook for kids, about Tapirs and the importance of conserving their dwindling populations. The foundation is called Fondacion de Oscar Efren Reyes, and you can find them on Facebook.

Ok quick transition… I took a bus back to Riobamba just for 2 days, to spend new years with the Rodriguez´ and to pick up a bag of batteries I left there the first time I visited. I arrived in the afternoon on NYE and everybody was getting ready to go out for the evening. I didnt really bring any clothes or supplies for going out, so thankfully Nathaly helped me out! She also did Beatriz’ makeup too.

One of the new years traditions is to create and then burn ‘Año viejos’, or ‘old years’. Each family picks a person or character, and you burn away the old you to make way for the new you in the new year.

This was one of my favorite año viejos… we drove around the city just looking at all the crazyness. Def wanna see this lady next year, on NYE…

This kid told me that this is his grandma.

Another NYE thing in Ecuador are the ‘crazy widows’. Basically, guys dress up like women, and jump all over your car as you drive down the street.

Sometimes they molest the hood of the car….

This guy jumped in the back of the pickup with us.

After the tour around the city checking out the años viejo and crazy dude ladies, we had dinner with Marisol´s family and friends and partied and danced in the street.

At midnight, the bodies were lit, with the help of eucalyptus leaves…

Haha this is super creepy but I swear its not a real person! Some people put little firecrackers inside the stuffed años viejo so they made crackly exploding noises as they burned too. Happy new year everybody!!!

And now, I’m back in Baños… just for one night, before packing up and biking east again!  I took the bus back from Riobamba today, and was sad to leave Jose, Marisol, Beatriz, Nathaly and Joseph. Meeting fantastic people and finding places I like makes the constant travel part of all this difficult, but I´m looking forward to the next part of the trip too.  Tomorrow I´ll bike 60 km or so to Puyo, which is located in El Oriente, or the low Amazon area east of the mountains in Ecuador.  From here, I’ll firm up the plans to visit Parque National Yasuni, which has the highest reported biodiversity in all the Amazon.  Hopefully the next post won’t be about Malaria or a nasty pirhana run-in…

Galapagos!

I interrupt this mostly-bike-blog to bring you… photos from an awesome week on a boat, cruising around some pretty sweet Pacific islands! There are precious few things that live up to long-held childhood fantasies, but this place delivered, big time. There were 16 people aboard our boat, and as one Aussie, Clare, said… Galapagos definitely came to the party.

We saw everything.  The joke was that we were always getting 2-for-1 (sometimes 20-for-1!) deals… you’d try to take a picture of a cute sealion and dangit, there would be a booby and 20 crabs photobombing the shot.  While snorkeling, we didn’t just see a Galapagos penguin, we saw a dozen penguins, and then a flightless cormorant, and then a sea turtle would show up and do something cool like munch on algae before I could get over seeing the penguins. I think my favorite example was the female sealion, fur bloody from having just given birth.  Her brand new pup was right beside her, and two Galapagos hawks waited a few feet away to eat her placenta after it was expelled. Wow. You can check out that pic in the series from Santa Fe island. We had a great guide with over 20 years of experience who also leads trips for Cornell students (Fausto Rodriguez, http://www.galapagosbest.com if you’re thinking of going…). On this trip we saw a bunch of things that were incredible or first-time experiences even for him, after spending decades watching these islands.  Tortoise eating sealion poop… first adult tortoise sighting for Fausto in the lowlands of James island…  Pod of Pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins (with babies!) played around the boat for almost an hour on the west side of Isla Isabella… the list goes on.  But lists suck… let’s get to the pics!!

If you’ve already been there or you’re a tropical eco-oceano-volcanologist (read: you just wanna see the boobies), you can definitely skip this part, but I wanted to give a quick boiled-down background on Galapagos as a volcanic archapelago, and some reasons why it’s so fascinating and enigmatic from a natural history point of view. I’m no expert, but I’ll share what I learned on the trip and from reading some of the books they had on board the boat and this blog from a resident of the islands.

Ok here goes… the archipelago is made up of many, active volcanoes.  The island of Fernandina erupted in 2009… we watched video footage of the whole lava splooging event!  The area under the islands is a hotspot for plate tectonic activity, and new islands, under the surface of the water, are even being pushed up right now!  The soil, rocks and landscapes are all the products of eruptions or other events like “Tufe” which are like localized volcano burps, that create craters and layers and layers of highly erodable packed dust.

So you have a unique, volcanic landscape, and now put that at the intersection of at least three major ocean currents. These currents bring drastically varying temperature and nutrient levels to different parts of the islands, and affect its weather patterns and in turn its ecology.  Combine these again with the effects of El Niño, every 8 years or so, and your expectation for Endless Forms Most Beautiful goes through the roof.  Briefly, the major ocean currents are the Humboldt, Cromwell and Panama.  The Humboldt brings cold water up the coast of S. America, and we can thank it for bringing Penguins to galapagos and for the subtropical climate even though Galapagos is on the equator.  The Cromwell current runs west to east, and pummels the western islands (Isabela, Fernandina…) with cold, but nutrient-rich water thanks to upwelling of dead organic matter from the deep ocean.  The Panama current is warm and has a seasonality which gives the islands their wet and dry seasons. It also brings lots of fish, so when you snorkel or dive, you see lots of the same fish you’d find in the Caribbean.  In December, for example, it’s the dry season, and things will start to green up in the next few months.

So the upshot of all this is that the terrestrial and marine life on Galapagos have evolved, among fierce competition, in a dynamic hotspot of environmental and nutrient variation.  All of the different microenvironments in space and time have supported a unique set of organisms, and so any time you visit, you’ll see a slightly different panel of contestants depending on where and when you’re there.  For example, during El Niño years, the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt current falters and leaves the islands bathed in warm water. This means there’s no food for the fish, and in turn no food (and water that’s too hot) for penguins and turtles, and on up the food chain. The sealions suffer too, and their populations decline.

But, It’s also really rainy during El Niño years so the terrestrial plants and cacti grow like crazy. Land iguanas eat the cacti, so they get nice and fat, and make more babies (see pic below of land iguana standing on it’s hind legs for a delicious bite…). The seed-eating Galapagos Finches do really well during El Niño as well, and in turn their populations plummet when conditions re-stabilize. You’ve heard of the beaks of the finches… the seed types that dominate during each El  Niño select for finch beak types, and you can watch over the years different beak types dominate during each successive El Niño.  The finches have been one of the only real-time example of vertebrate evolution… I’ll recommend the book Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner if you’re interested in a not-too-dense version of an amazing story.

Which brings us to Dec 1-8, just a tiny snapshot in time at the end of what seemed like a pretty regular dry season, on this cool and dynamic set of islands. Here’s the map of the route we took through the islands… we slept aboard the boat and visited all of the places marked by the RED line during the day. We’d spend time walking in each place, and we’d usually snorkel there too, to see the excitement from underwater too.

A picture of the map on the wall in the boat… our route is the red one. We started in San Cristobal and ended in Baltra, going clockwise.

I’ll make a separate photo gallery for each island, in the order we visited them.  Many of the same critters could be found on multiple islands, but always with interesting variation. For example, there are 3 different species of land iguanas across the archipelago, and it was cool to see how they differed.  Look especially for my pics of lava lizards from each island… little tiny iguana relatives that have radiated into nine or so species across the islands, with lots of fun colors and flavors to choose from. It was fun to look for them in each place and see all the different types.  The best part was that they were rarely afraid, so they’d often sit still so I could get close enough for a picture with my woefully underpowered point-n-shoot.

December 1: Arrive in San Cristobal, boat to nearby Isla Lobos

The Eden… home for a week, with a fantastic crew

Quarters

The Eden carried 2 zodiac motor rafts for going out to visit the islands after anchoring.

First stop of the trip… Isla Lobos, just off San Cristobal. Some sealion ladies and a big protective male! They make the funniest belching sounds.

Babies, awwww

Isla lobos lava lizard

For you scenery people

December 2: Santa Fe and South Plaza islands

Walking up to the beach onto Santa Fe from the zodiac

Cool drought-tolerant plant… not much green during the dry season but this was pretty

What are we all lookin at, seriously guys

Santa Fe lava lizard

Santa Fe land iguana

Sally lightfoot crab… these were awesome and we saw them on many of the islands

The ultimate 3-for-1… Galapagos hawk waits to eat the placenta after the birth of the pup

Land iguanas have to work a little harder for their prickly pears during the dry season… notice the awesome colors, this is South Plaza island and it was full of these red succulents. The red is a pigment that acts as UV protection… all the red will be green in a few months.

Swallow-tailed gull on S. Plaza island

December 3: Isla Santa Cruz and the Charles Darwin Research Station and Tortoise Breeding center

Baby torts (about 3 years old), of the species from Isla Pinzon. The tortoise populations on many of the islands have been depleted or wiped out from both hunting by people and rats that eat eggs and babies. The center breeds tortoises from each island separately, and raises them til they’re at a ‘rat safe’ age of about 5 or 6 years. Then they’re re-released.

The sign on the enclosure of the babies in the previous pic. There were several large enclosures with closeable mesh tops to keep rats out. Each one was labeled with the hatch year and the island where the babies are native.

Piles of marine iguanas… these guys are good photobombers

This is Diego, a native of Isla Española… he used to live in the San Diego zoo, but was returned to the galapagos after his species nearly went the way of Lonesome George’s. You can tell the Española tortoises by their highly curved saddle-shaped shells.

At the fish market in Puerto Ayora, just outside the research station on Santa Cruz. there’s lots of help from the locals.

Santa Cruz tortoises roam around the highlands and you can find them on farms up there. We were walking in a grassy pasture with horses and tortoises together… Old MacDonald has another animal to come up with a sound for I guess…

December 4: Southern end of Isla Isabela, and another tortoise breeding center

Isabela tortoise eating sealion poop for breakfast along the side of the road

Male marine iguana standoff… this turned into a pretty exciting fight, actually… they butted heads just like rams and it looked like the object was to knock the other one over the edge behind the rocks. Bets were made, but in the end the guy in front won. I have video of this, will post a link when my ipad decides it’s ok posting things to youtube…

Tortoise tracks

Aplastado tortoises at the Isabela rehab center. Aplastados are a sub-population found around one of the volcanoes on Isabela (Sierra Negra) and have uniquely flattened shells.

December 5: Punta Moreno and Elizabeth bay, west side of Isabela

Isabela is one of the younges islands, made up of the lava rock from 6 volcanoes. All but one of these are active, and the last one erupted in 2005. The lava fields were amazing, dotted with these oases where seawater comes in at high tide and sometimes traps fish.

Isabela lava lizard… they’re getting darker!

Marine iguana on the lava

Lava cacti – grow directly on the lava and are unique to the Galapagos

Mangroves line this part of Isabela’s shore, and are uniquely salt tolerant. Every 10th leaf or so is yellow, and the plant sacrifices this minority of leaves by concentrating salts there. This assertion was tested and confirmed using a simple taste test. 🙂 Hiding in the mangroves was what Fausto called a “Treelion”… hahahaha

Bipedal treelion

December 6: Continuing north up the west side of Isabela – Tagus cove, Darwin’s only landing site on the island. Also visited the lava tidepools on Isla Fernandina.

Tagus cove, Darwin’s landing point. Here, Darwin was pretty much out of fresh water and needed to go find some. He thought he saw a trickle at some point, so he went on a long hike up to find the lake, that must be just over the hill…

And then he found this! A concentrated saline lake! Dangit! This lake and the layers of sediment were formed by volcanic tuff (or tufe in Spanish), which is a small eruption that sends up a ton of ash, which falls and gets deposited in layers and slopes according to wind patterns. This picture reminded me of my dissertation… two bodies of water, unique in their salinities and microbial communities, separated by a small bridge… gotta say, this woulda been a way better field site than the Great Salt Lake!!

Overlooking Isabela’s volcanoes from a viewpoint above the salty lake

West Isabela lava lizard

We spent a little time in the volcanic tidepools on Fernandina… got to see these flightless cormorants with their cute stubby wings. Later that day, I saw them from underwater, diving down for fish. More sally lightfoot crabs in the background…

December 7: Puerto Egas on Isla Santiago (also called James Island), and a quick trip to Isla Rabida

Arriving on James Is

Sometimes you just get the itch

Lava lizard on James… the females have red throat patches

Crackly lava coastline with marine iguana photobomb

More volcanic ash sediment that creates cool formations with erosion. Oh, and pile of iguanas.

Closeup of the sediment layers

Fausto’s only sighting of an adult tortoise on James island near the coast. There are tortoise populations up in the highlands, and the island is being repopulated with youngsters from the breeding center, but Fausto had never seen an adult in this area before. It was cool to see him freak out about it.

Isla Rabida is a little speck south of James island, with unique red sand… from iron, magnesium and manganese in the volcanic soil. Sealions were napping on the hot sand, looking cute and making belchy noises as ususal.

Another cute wildlife sighting

December 8: Seymour island, and departure from Baltra

Seymour island is a frigate breeding area, so we got to see a bunch of them up close. This is a male, not ready to mate because his red pouch is small and deflated.

Part of showing off and finding a good mate (as a male) is the presentation. You need a nice looking red throat, you have to find a good solid tree to sit in, and look generally strong and good daddy material. Clare the Aussie said about this guy, “I wouldn’t do him.” I agreed… small gnarly tree, sloppy one wing out, bad posture… sorry dude.

Seymour island land iguana… the cool story about these guys is that many of them were originally native to neighboring Baltra island. Before Baltra became a US military post, Allan Hancock foresaw that the iguanas there would go extinct if the military made an installment there. So he transported 200 Baltra iguanas to Seymour, and indeed the remaining Baltra iguanas went extinct. Later, Seymour (originally Baltra) iguanas were used as breeding stock at the Darwin station, and were reintroduced to Baltra in the 90s.

Baby frigate (Can’t remember if this is the Great or Magnificent frigate…)

Seymour lava lizard

This was our last photo at our last stop in the Galapagos before flying back to Guayaquil… appropriate that the sealions sent us off just like they (sort of) welcomed us a week before.

And it was over so quickly… sadly these pics are just the tip of the iceberg of the things we saw. I have lots of video and Ed and another guy on the boat have some pretty cool underwater footage, especially of the huge group of whales and dolphins we saw off Isabela. We’re working on an iMovie montage of some of those, and I’ll post the link if/when it materializes. 🙂

After spending some rest days in Guayaquil and on the coast, I’m headed back north to visit some of the Ecuador I missed in my hurry to get down here.  Tomorrow I’ll bus up into the mountains a ways, and spend a day acclimating to the altitude before biking to Riobamba, and then to Ambato.  Early January I hope to be in the Amazon… no plans yet, but stay tuned…

Southern Colombia and a way-too-fast first pass through Ecuador

I’ve been in Ecuador less than a week and I’m already in the southern region…. that took way too many busses for me, thanks. Tanja and I headed south through Pasto and Ipiales, Colombia, together before crossing the border (on bikes!) and then parting ways a day later.  We stopped a night in Otavalo, a really cool and quiet town about two hours south of the border, and then I spent a few days in Quito before heading to Guayaquil.  The reason for the rush and busses is…. a trip to Galapagos that starts tomorrow!!

Here’s a gallery of some photos of the last of Colombia and the first of Ecuador. Highlights include a ceviche prepared from mussels out of a street cart, and a wonderful 3-day visit with Bruce Hoeneisen and his wife. Bruce is a scientist, founded a university in Quito, and has an avocado farm where he grows 6 different varieties. So great to talk some science again!  I plan to stay in Ecuador several weeks after the Galapagos trip, at least, so I feel a little better about the uncomfortable bus rush the first time.  Next post will be full of the stuff of my childhood dreams…. ohboyohboyohboy….. giant reptiles….!!!

Our first stop after the trampoline of death was a small pueblo called El Puerto, on a lake (Laguna de las cochas). This was probably the strangest little place so far, if only because it was built to replicate a swiss ski village. We had no idea when we arrived, so it was pretty funny that we were the only two tourists in this tourist village where every house was a hotel or restaurant.

There is a small island with a national widlife sanctuary out in the lake, so we took a boat out there the morning after we arrived. Saw some really cool birds (including a duck with a blue bill… Tanja got some good pics of it), and it was fun to be out on the water. As a food lover, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that I had some amazing trout and more homemade yogurt.

We biked out of the Swiss-Colombian village to Pasto (about 25 km), and had a nice view of the lake and island where we had just been. This nice view was the reward for 400 m or so of straight climbing.

Pasto was a nice town…. pretty busy in the streets at night. We found a coffee shop the next morning, which occupied a small corner of a colonial looking building. We learned that these buildings have amazing secret atriums inside…. check this out. This is an office building, and the coffee shop is located where I’m standing. The cool thing is I’ve been in at least 4 buildings in as many towns that look bland-ish on the outside but have this kind of central pavillion. Our hostel in Pasto (Koala Inn) had this same architecture.

We then took a bus from Pasto to Ipiales, the last town before the Ecuador border. We stayed just outside of Ipiales, in a hotel run by nuns in a little town called Santuario de las lachas. The church was built and people make trips here for the miracles that come true here…. all sorts of neat stuff like blind people seeing again and maybe limb regeneration. That would be pretty miraculous to me. The church itself was incredible… I’m no expert in church prettyness but I liked this one.

Rrrgh bad form.

The church is down in a gorge and so we asked a nice man to watch our bikes while we went to look at it. He kept them safe and we gave him a few thousand pesos as thanks.

It’s official! Biked across the border from Ipiales into Tulcan, the first big-ish town in Ecuador.

Wouldn’t be a proper border without somebody looking for diseases coming in and out….

We reached Tulcan by 10am and then took a bus 2 hours to Otavalo. Glad to see this kind of thing in so many places! Lots of these ciclo vias are in places youwouldn’t want to ride, but Otavalo was a pretty quiet town so it was nice to bike around.

I realized this was a risk… ceviche on the street, $3.50. All those brown guys are mussels (conchas), and the final product is in the gray cup. So worth it….and GI fury-free 6 days later!

Otavalo is a center of commerce for indigenous groups who sell grains, produce, and textiles made of alpaca wool. There was a great open market one morning and I liked all these different grains and beans all next to each other.

A produce stall in the same market in Otavalo

An alpaca! Thank you for the blanket!

I bussed to Quito the next day (2 hours), and it took me an hour to bike from the bus station to Bruce Hoeneisen’s house. This is another cyclovia in the historic center of Quito.

Bruce, his wife Matico and I. I had an amazing 3 days staying in their house, talking about climate change data, and how to grow avocados. It was so nice to stay in a house with friendly company and homecooked meals…. how appropriate that I was there the days before thanksgiving. Also, look up University de San Francisco de Quito on Wikipedia, and do a ctrl-F for Bruce Hoeneisen.

Four of six avocados picked on Bruce and Matico’s farm, ordered from shortest to longest ripening time. The one on the right is the haas, which takes 17 days and can’t be sold here b/c it takes too long. Bruce just grows them for himself, Matico and friends. The left-most two avocados are native to ecuador, and the 3rd one was brought here from Guatemala. This one must be grafted onto ecuadorian plants or it will succumb to local viruses and fungi. Also interesting is that the hass has the highest fat content and is really creamy…. the others are slightly firmer, less creamy and it turns out have lower lipids.

The inside of the guatemalan avocado…. behind it is a jar of honey, from Bruce’s bees which polinate all the trees. The honey had a little bit of avocado flavor!

I took the Retarder bus to Guayaquil from Quito…. a miserable 10 hours with nonstop violent action movies on full volume. The seats were comfy and the views awesome, but could’ve done w/o the war movies.

Guayaquil, Parque Bolivar. This is a very special park….

…Because of THIS! Bunches of these guys live here, and hang out on the ground and in the trees. A real concern is getting peed on by an iguana out of a tree. Saw it happen.

You can walk up the hill to the Santa Ana historic barrio, and to do so you take 444 numbered stairs. Along the way are cute houses and bars, and at the top are a lighthouse and a chapel, and great views. The cute area shares the hill with some of the poorest people in the city and this kind of contrast in such a small space is always unnerving to me. It made the cute stairs feel a little fake, and made me want to walk through the real neighborhood too.

And look who came with me for jugo this morning!!!!