This town is nice, the kind of nice that makes me unpack my backpack completly and start pumping restaurant owners about job opportunities. I hear it´s been in the 40´s for the past couple weeks in Portland, so for my web-footed friends up in the Pac NW, suck in the ambient warmth from the next couple paragraphs.
Canoa is on the central coast of Ecuador, with access roads of such low quality that it has managed to escape the tidal waves of gringos plaguing the rest of the country. I mean, there´s tourists out here but the first hostel didn´t open until five years ago. Before that there was only the guys and their fishing boats, rolling out every morning on big logs to the water´s edge to bring in the day´s mariscos and cebiche.
We´ve been hanging for the most part, taking up hammock space in one of the dozen beach bars (read: rasta-colored cerveza and pizza shacks) lining the town ¨boulevard¨. There´s bat caves and possible blue-footed booby sightings on the beach north of town for when we´re feeling like an adventure. I´m covered in a bouquet of bug bites like I am each time I re-introduce my body to the tropics and I could care less.
We have bonfires that Erik attends to with impressive amounts of fidelity that attract bluegrass singing guitarists and flautists. There´s bizarre spikey purple shells that we´re finding on the beach that ache to be incorporated into one of my macrame bracelets.
Actually, we did have one excursion out of town in the week we´ve been here. We headed out to ¨Finca Organica (Organic Farm) Rio Muchacho.¨ Ecuador is well known as a landing spot for eco tourist, that curiously wealthy species of traveler. At Rio Muchacho you can pay obscene (by Ecuadorean standards) prices to stay in a hammock and muck around in pig feces and gray water systems 7 hours a day.
Here is an exercise bike they have hooked up to a pepper grinder. This is an idea I can get on board with.
It was a nice place to visit though. Jesse, our German guide to the farm´s workings, took us by their garden where they´re growing peanuts, passionfruit, hot peppers, pineapples, papayas, rice, beans and coffee. We sampled their harvest liberally and left with a newfound respect for the organic, sustainable system of farming. The sign below details the ground rules for a happy hippy farm. I hope you can read point 2 font.
Basically, here is the gist. Pigs poop. Pig poop drains to hole, where chickens pick through poop. Poop is set underneath guinea pig cages for refination by their mas rico poop. This is then inseminated with plant life, lots of different kinds so the poop (now called fertilizer) is best used nutritionally and rotated about year by year for the same reason. Additional vitamins are added to the soil, not the plant, which grows into food for eco tourists. Eco tourists take care of animal helpers, including Isidro the obese pig and a bevy of excitable guinea pigs. Organic farm!
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I was really impressed by the number of you who got amped on where that $450 plane ticket is going! I feel loved. Yes, it is to the States! But not to where any of you (I think) are. We´re headed up to Guatemala in a week and a half. Due to the vagaries of our international air travel system, it was cheaper to stop through Miami than to get a direct flight from anywhere in South America. So I´ll be back in the good ´ol U S of A for four days! Total mind freak. They say Miami is the capital of Latin America, and it´s the biggest US city I´ve never been in. Slowly extending my reach around the globe, per usual.
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