Missed Cuenca, but celebrated my B-Day

This morning, I was supposed to wake up really early to fly to Cuenca. I don’t know what happened, but when I first remember having opened my eyes in the morning, it was 7:30am and already two hours late. So I ate breakfast and took a cab to the Quicentro, I worked there all morning for lunch I had called Patricio Jr., we were suppose to meet at 2pm, but as I called him he asked me for an extra hour and an extra and an extra, so I met a girl owning a stand at the Quicentro to get time to pass quicker. But at 5:30pm, I was really starving, so fuck Patricio, I went for lunch on my own at Burger King. After lunch, I went to a videogame centre in the Quicentro and played for an hour before meeting up with Leny.
With Leny, we went and have a couple beers, in a very nice little Italian restaurant and around 8:30pm, we went to her home. I got introduced to her three sisters, her father and her two kids. I played basketball, soccer and baseball with Sebastian and Alvaro-Eduardo until 10pm when I headed to the Tavu, a nightclub where I had decided to invite my friends to celebrate my birthday. I was served free drinks from 10:30pm to 11:30pm so I got quite wasted. By midnight, Carolina and Eduardo came with a bunch of friends and then came Raul with his girlfriend Maria-Rose, I was quite disappointed because nobody else came, but I had a great time. I’ve spent most of the night trying to keep my balance and dancing with Carolina and her friends. The music was great and the party was going on, it’s going to be a memorable birthday in a third world country. By three O’clock, when I had exhausted my energy dancing by the rhythm of the music, I took a cab back home. Unfortunately, by midway the cab had broke his wheel protector, and couldn’t go further, so I’ve done something I was highly discouraged to do, I hitchhiked backed home. Lucky as I am, I must of waited a total of 2mn for a car driver. As I got back home, I called Carolina to tell that I was safe and sound heading for my bed.

Job appointment and nice afternoon talk

I woke up quite late this morning, but drove down town to see Leny for a while before going to an interview for my next Job.
At 1:30pm was my appointment, I met up with Christian Wally a Swiss dude that has been working for Nestlé and who now works for the chamber of commerce of Ecuador. We spoke for over an hour about the Ecuadorian culture, development, market strategies of companies, and so on before finally getting to the most interesting point which was to know what I was going to be doing working for the them during the next month. I’m not quite clear in my head about that, so I’ll only tell my blog after I have started on Monday.
After the meeting, I took a cab straight to Lourdes and Patricio’s house to have lunch with the whole family and also a cousin and aunt that where special honor guests, because they now live in Florida and where in Ecuador for just two days.
After lunch, everybody left but I stayed with Patricio Jr., Pablo and Andy until 1:00am. Unbelievable, but time flew really fast. I had a great time speaking to all of them about absolutely everything, from politics, to love, through philosophy and sciences, business and relations, we spoke and spoke all day and night until the three of them took the car and drove me to Diego’s home where I’ve spent the night.

Wired break up!

This morning I took the bus to the Cinemark. Once I was there I decided to call several of friends and family, so I’ve spent the entire morning on the phone over the Atlantic. At lunch time, I met up with Leny, not to share food with her but to have a drink before meeting Carolina. At about 2:30pm, I met up with Carolina, we headed to Quicentro to have lunch in Crepes and Waffles. It was quite a nice lunch, speaking about my w-e in the Amazon and all kind of other stuff. By desert, I had found enough determination and courage to do what nobody likes doing, finding the words to break up. But the fun part is that as soon as we broke up, she invited me for a dance, she finally wanted to give my first dancing lesson. So we drove to a very touristy but full of bars quarter, picked a Cuban bar, and I finally learned a couple steps of meringue, salsa and flamenco. I felt like a fool being taught how to put one foot in front of the other, but never mind because if there is one thing the Latinos should teach our Western society, it definitely is how to dance. At around 6:00pm, when Carolina headed off, I met with Diego for another drink at the same place. Diego then dropped me for 8:15pm at the Polytechnique Theatre so that I could attend a Spanish dance show in which was participating Toya’s nice of 11 year old. There only were young children participating, from 5 to 15 year old people. I loved it especially seeing the youngest dance in such a disordinated manner. But it was absolutely beautiful, with beautiful dresses of every possible flashy color.
After the show, we went for a drink with the entire family, but I was really tired because of my flue and even though I was having a nice time speaking about Paris, I was happy to go back home for a nice sleep.

Wired hook up, but an extra experience

I woke up this morning for a normal day of work, I took the bus from San Rafael to Quito centre I went to the CCI mall.
For lunch I met up with Leny, the girl from the Corpei. Hooking up with her was an easy task and an enjoyable task even though she is a thirty year old woman which just made it more fun for me. After lunch, I got back to work until 6:00pm when I met back with Leny. She was supposed to go to export classes at the chamber of commerce, but in stead of that we took the bus until el Jardin and had a drink. For a good hour in a half we spoke about ourselves and the relation and guess what? Leny has been married and has two kids, Sebastian 7 and Alvaro-Eduardo nearly two. So I really am going to half a relation with an experienced girl.
I then took the cab to Diego’s place and drove back home with Toya. We had a good laugh together at the dinner table about the relation I was having and then headed for the news and in bed for a nice and long nice sleep. This day had totally pumped me out.

B-Day

This morning the wake up call was really hard, but I went for breakfast and tried to recover from last night intense party in the Amazon. There was no way a breakfast was enough; I have been hung out all day and you know what I think that I have by far not the worse hang out. After breakfast, I quickly packed all my belongings, gave a tip to the crew and hoped for the last time on that little boat. This time it was no more going to take us on an excursion, but it was only going to take to our starting point, the city of Coca.
As Christina and Daniela left straight away, because they were taking the preceding flight for Quito, we decided to go for a little and quick city tour before hanging out at the airport for our flight to leave.
As we got to Quito, Toya was waiting for me at the airport. So quick goodbye to everyone and then big hug to Toyita. She offered me to have lunch wherever I wanted, so we went to Burger King for my B-day, that’s what I was asking for. After lunch, we went to the post office, the hospital (Toya went to visit a friend), to the pharmacy because I was positive I had forgotten my toiletries which I actually had not and then home so that I could take a rest and recover from the night before.
My father woke me up with an adorable Birthday call I wasn’t expecting him to call me so late, but he did and I loved it. We then went to Blanche’s house to celebrate my Birthday with the Izurieta family, a little later Carolina came with a lot of candies for me and a very nice letter. We all had a nice talk around some chips and olives, speaking about movies, past events, my trip to the jungle and a lot of other stuff. For dinner we had Chinese food and for desert my Birthday cake. Then Blanche played piano for me as Carolina sung, I really enjoyed having Carolina sing a high pitched love song with her beautiful voice just for me. After that people started to leave, but I wasn’t ready for that yet, so I had a seat on the sofa with Raul.
He is suppose to be a ping pong champ and wanted to have a ping pong game with me, but not unless he could bet money. So I offered an amount, he thought it was ridiculous and didn’t want anything under 20 dollars. Ok so lets go for it! By the end the two set game I was US$20 dollar richer. Nice and easy money.
After the game, we all left. Toya, Fabian and I drove back home and had a good night sleep.

Thirs day in the Jungle

This morning we didn't need to leave too early because our day wasn’t to booked up.
In the morning we went to a very small city that had a museum for local art that was from the 8th to the 13th century. We could see kitchen jars, body remains jars but some tribes would eat the ashes of the dead in order to live with the help of their spirit. We then tried out sarbacane that locals would use to kill animals like monkeys or birds, it is a huge tube of at least three meters. There was one little shop in the village that was selling drinks, so we decided to stop for a little beer before going back to the Manatee. We then had a delicious lunch, our usual two hour break and then headed off to see some local indigenes in there house.
Local people cultivate a lot of yoca for their daily personal consumption and other plants like banana and cacao that they trade in order to earn a little money. They live in homes built with local wood, no walls and with a roof made of a special bamboo leaf that supposedly could last eight years.
At night as we got back to our ship nobody was brave enough to take a dive, so everybody went canoeing for half an hour, but I wanted to go swim in the middle of the Amazon. I thought it would be a unique experience especially that the river I dived in is the black Coca river reputed for its high yield of piranhas. After the swim, the diner was served and at the table we’ve been introduced to the boat crew that has been so good to us, and we’ve been given the program for our remaining time in the Oriente.
After diner we watched a couple pictures of animals that we have or could have seen on our tour, with explanations made by our guide. We then took our little boat and headed for the island in the middle of the river to make a fire camp. It was quite fun and we even had booze.
As we got back on the boat, I bought myself the only whiskey bottle on board so that Christina, Juan Pablo and me got very drunk. As drunk as having posed for pictures and not remember having done it. I remember breaking, I remember singing, talking, laughing and urinating and even going to bed but there just is some stuff I can’t recall.

Second day on the Manatee

We woke up at 5:15am this morning, took a quick breakfast and all left for an hour trip downstream on our little boat in order to reach one of the Napo Wildlife Center spots that was suppose to have a lot of birds. It sure had a lot of birds because we could hear them, but unfortunately we have just seen a far away flow of birds for the first fifteen minutes but we stayed until nine hoping to see some more and closer, but we didn’t. So we took our little up for fifteen minutes upstream, walked through puddles of mud, up and down hills, across rivers and finally arrived to our second Wildlife spot. There we have seen thousands and thousands of parrots up in the high trees, but for over forty-five minutes, they flew down in a little cave and we could literally see thousands of green parrots with blue wings on the inside no further than thirty meters away from us. I was a superb ballet of colorful green birds. We then walked back our way to the boat and drove our boat back to our main ship where we have once again been greeted with a welcome back cocktail. We then had a twenty minute rest before getting lunch, after lunch we had a good two hours rest and as everybody was exhausted they all locked themselves in their respective room, but I went at the bar and spoke with the crew for a good hour before heading to my room to write a couple lines before leaving for the afternoon excursion. We then boarded again our little boat and headed upstream this time for a very different vegetation type of high grass. We walked through this green for half an hour before reaching a paved path that led to a village that was built around a petrol resource and for a petrol industry, what a shame! But we didn’t actually see the village but only the school that was on the way to the lake. We waited for a good half hour speaking to military that were trying to fish before we got on a small wooden boat for a lake tour. On the tour, we saw birds of course, a couple monkeys, I tried to fish piranhas unsuccessfully and when night occurred and obscurity was ruling over the evening we took the spotlight out and searched for caiman alligators. It’s absolutely incredible the eyes of the caimans reflect red light as if they where cars breaking, it’s unbelievable. We also saw loads of glowing mosquitoes, some fireflies and others that wouldn't fly, but in such quantity, that we could guide ourselves by their light. You’ve got to see it to believe it. We then headed back to the port where we embarked, took a cap to another port of the village, took our little boat to cross the Napo River and stepped on our Manatee boat for dinner. After dinner I had a little talk with Christina to settle some small issues and started chilling at the bar with everyone. Had a nice and musically chilled evening.