Frankenpants

After we dried off we made it to dinner where Capitan said "you know, its gonna be a cold night in these shorts I made today." To which I replied, "we should get some whisky, needle and thread and and go to the park in the middle of town and sit down to let me watch you sew," (from my perspective this turned out to be a most brilliant idea). We spent the rest of dinner trying to learn the words for needle and thread. We procured the prementioned items with little resistance and got the pant legs out of the trash from the room and headed to the fountain in the square.

The amount of laughter that came out of my mouth over the next hour of sitting by El Capitan and cheering him on in trying to sew his pant legs back on, was likely in some way proportional to the amount of Clan Macgregor (proceed with caution) that went into my mouth. But that would be to simplify things, and the method of sewing El Capitan was inventing began with the words "you know, I planned on sewing back in the room, because then I wouldn't have to sew these legs back on..."
"Heavens, don't sew your legs!"
"...while i'm not wearing the damn things."



A note on this second picture, I did not purposefully put the bubbles in the shot I like to call Bubbleworld. The camera elves did that with a perfect eye for detail, because if it makes you think of faeries dancing about to cast a spell, or fizzy lifting drinks, then you are on the right track.


While this was going on, people were strolling by and we got three reactions. One was to look away as if some poor chap sewing his pants together was a disgrace; the second was for people to take a double-take and see that, yes, he is sewing his pants together, and laugh their fool heads off, this we counted as a success; and then folks of our age and nothing better to do would stop by to talk, and share a drink. I had to continually turn away a swig of puntas from the Licoria store owner's son. He kept trying to invite us to his place because there was going to be chicas, but we had to point out that El Capitan needed to sew his pants together and wasn't in any shape to go anywhere until that was completed. They taught us the Mindo handshake before they left - a right handed slap, then a fist punch (to the other's fist, jeez).

"Sewing underneath my legs is the worst, i'm just gonna go with it and hope it holds."[Frankenpants]

You will notice in the shot called Frankenpants that he did not bother to line up his right leg in such a way that the tear away above the boot is actually from years of that heel stepping on what used to be the back of the pants. I can't finish the Frankenpants until I mention that not 5 minutes later one leg tore off very quickly. We stopped in front of a bar and he re-did it in a matter of minutes, being a professional on-body sewer at this point. A few kids came by to laugh and we exchanged the Mindo handshake which impressed them. After laughing at El Capitan and his pantalones, to which each time El Capitan replied "earlier today I needed shorts, but now I need pants," they inquired about the Mindfold. But weren't much interested beyond the sleep mask aspect. Some people just don't get It.

But we do.
We went to second dinner at Out of Babylon, again. We got there and it was totally dark so we asked the folks outside if the restaurant was open (and most whenever I say We did something involving the Spanish language, that means El Capitan did, or he forced me to stand up for myself and butcher a simple sentence); and they said of course, it was just that the power was out and we'd have to eat by candlelight if that was alright. I said in English "alright? we don't need any light at all," and I slid the Mindfold down over my eyes with a straight face.
The next pictures are of a game in which we 'Mindfinded the scotch.' The ingredients you need for this are 1)Mindfold 2)Scotch 3)a restuarant that doesn't mind you bringing your own scotch in 4)candlelight for the mood and photo ops. This was a basic game where the Seer takes a glass of scotch and places to the right or left in front of the Mindfolder who then uses whatever technique they find appropriate to take their guess by reaching their right or left hand out for the drink. If they are correct and find the drink, they get a sip, if incorrect, the Seer receives the sip. We played a good 10 rounds and each of us had better than 50% success, thanks, quite possibly, to my faulty memory. We also were able to enlist our server for a round and he got it right, and took the entire 2oz shot instead of a sip, because we forgot to tell him that part of the rules.
Here is me with my challenge laid before me.














Ohhh i'm wrong.













Here is El Capitan with his challenge laid before him.













Success!!














We then went to the bridge for a final toast to Mindo, and here is mainstreet Mindo at midnight

Las Cascadas

(Yáll will have to forgive me, this computer is not fast enough to upload the mentioned videos here...i´ll get to it soon, but here are some photos to hold you over)


Rogue Cascadas Therapy
Mostly I want to let these videos speak for themselves. But the backstory is that we came upon the waterfalls when a few other sets of folks were already there. These videos were taken in the lower, smaller falls where the forces in the water were still extreme enough to pull you around. And what you can't see is that the riverbed went from golf ball sized stones that supported your weight to a fine sand that your foot would sink to the ankle making movement into the swirl that much harder. [video me] Now what you have just witnessed was more than just the first ever Mindfolding of Mindo's Las Cascadas, but you actually took part in a bit of Rogue Therapy, whether intending to or not, because I was facing a subset of my biggest fear ever: Sharks, and the subset being, things-that-touch-your-feet-when-they-are-underwater-and-i-can't-see-them-anymore. But in its own way, the Mindfold made facing my fear easier, because trying to walk through a whirlpool to touch a waterfall when you can't see anything makes the whole experience enormous and easily fearable so i didn't focus on the minor more irrational fear, I had to wade through the big fear.


El Capitan makes it look easy...[video]
We played in the bottom pool for a bit, waiting for the groups up there to disperse. Then we cimbed this rope up a rock about 20 ft at an enormous incline. I used mostly my arms as I couldn't trust my feet with the slipperiness of the thin layer of moss that grew in the waterfall's spray area. Once we got up to the pool of the major falls, pictures became useless because the falls had actually carved out a chamber over the aeons, and to get to them took two freeswinging cable bridges to get across the whitewater between the two falls. Then we had to strip down to our swimsuits and leave the backpack (and camera) to traverse the narrow channel where the river had let itself out of the enormous cylinder its waterfall is pouring through. The waterlevel went from ankle deep to swimming in moments. We had to work for every stroke forward, and the sound got so that we had to yell next to each other. The air was filled with water, the most pregnant cloud, almost unbreathable as the foam churned feet over the water. We sidestepped the frontal foamage and worked around to a nook that took climbing up slimy rocks, not even thick moss could withstand the constant barrage in here, to sit in the crevice; egg-shaped and 15 feet tall it must have been caused by a waterfall of floodwaters 50 times the fall's current size. It was exactly the type of nook Golum[sp?] would talk to himself in. I tried to swim from the side into the waterfall, but got to shivering uncontrolably from all this time in the cold waters and I didn't trust my strength once I got into the outer waves of foamy waters. But El Capitan went back to my bag with me and took my Mindfold and went until he was swimming and put it on and then swam into the churning of the waterfall. "I imagined myself in a galactic vortex where time was sped up to the point that stars were going thru their life cycles in moments. I was wading thru the fabric of time and space and the closer I got to the central black hole, the more violent the churning of space all around me." Spoken like a true mindfolder.

Las Cascadas were mesmerizing and we wished we didn't have to go, but the last run of the Tarabita was at 4 and we didn't want to miss it and get stranded. We did the hike back up and it started raining. I bundled into my rain jacket which became immeasurably useful going out into the open sky in the middle of the Cloud Forest and speeding thru the open sky at 15 mph and the rain is coming in sheets. A miracle of physics allowed me hunching over in a ball with my back to the direction we were going effectively shielded my legs from any rain at all and me, my backpack and pants stayed 95% dry. This proved more important since we were going to wait with the Tarabita drivers to give us a ride down the mountain. But it ended up that the drivers believed not everyone had come back by 4. We waited for 45 minutes until the drivers gave up on waiting and shut the thing down. We headed down just hoping the fellows had made it back across and the drivers had just not recalled.


Shark Surfing
As we were in the back of the truck, heading down the potholefull road, in the Cloud Forest's not-really-rain it quickly became hard to hold onto the roll bar in the back of the truck; and doubly so when the Mindfold came out. The Seer had to call out branches of overhanging trees to duck from as well as just having to hold on at every bump you can't see to predict. We decided to move past the Mindfold quickly and into a branch of Shark Riding that we came to call Surfing the Shark. In a full standing position we let our hands hover an inch from the roll bar so that we could grab it at any moment but other than our feet, didn't touch the truck. Rolling at about 15 mph we could do this for a good thirty seconds at a time until we hit a turn that was too tight, or a hole too big, so that we would grab the roll bar and steady. After a bit of this we started working with our central Chi energy in ball form spinning it like a gyroscope to keep in constant, flux of balance with the rolling truck. Speed, rain, washed clean in a waterfall and Minfoldsplorations of the day got us in the high-sped giddiness where we were yelling about the spinning ball of Chi invisible but tangible in our hands and hollering like on a rollercoaster, until we heard laughing behind us and we turned to see another truck full of folks watching our antics of balancing and losing it and laughing uncontrolably. The Cloud Forest had descended upon us all.

La Tarabita

The next day, Tuesday, I woke early enough to have breakfast for the first time in Ecuador. I wasn't impressed. I still am not able to eat before noon, which had been easily solved by sleeping past that, but at 10 I was not ready for runny pancakes or eggs, even as fresh as they were. So I had whisky in my coffee to get some calories...as we were going to hike to the Las Cascadas. For lunch to take with us, El Capitan was set on finding sandwhiches of cheese and tomato.
"I love cheese so much that I don't want to let Ecuadorian cheese ruin my love for cheese." The first night in Quito I tried a pizza and the result was a broader conception of Cheese.
"Why can't you just consider the cheese here as another kind that you don't like as well? And just eat it because it will nourish you?"
Fine argument El Capitan, but i'd rather eat fruit and nuts. Nuts I already had on me, and fruit I purchased from the back of a truck and was informed I got ripped off paying 25 centavos for 2 oranges (I just finished the second one now and it was worth a great deal more than 12.5 cents). But El Capitan has been pointing out my weakness in the area of negotiation. And I am the first to admit I hate the banter and price changing. To me if the price you are asking is not what I want to pay, then I walk away. I have always had a distaste in my mouth for haggling and don't intend on playing that game. It feels too much like confrontation for me.

So we started down the road that would lead us out of town and encountered a contingent of United Statesian girls about college age who asked us where the waterfalls were.
El Capitan: "Well its about an hour and a half hike more or less straight up this mountain, then you have to pay $5 to take the Tarabita across the valley and hike another half an hour down into the jungle. Basically as you are going, you need to always turn onto, or take the road that looks like it could hold a car. And the flip flops you are wearing are not going to hold up to these hills." The girls turned around.

As we progressed up the mountain we went from 2500 meters to over 4400 meters in about an hour and a half. Of course the Mindfold came out and we realized the person who is giving directions of how not to step in puddles or horse-droppings, is in the position, relative to the Mindfolder, of 'Seer.' El Capitan had a daunting task when I was folding the upward hike, because it was during a section of great mud and puddles. We wove through the gauntlet without me so much as getting a foot wet based on following his footsteps' sound. Each time a truck would come by carrying a load of people each paying a dollar for the ride, we would step aside and wave at them.
"Okay here comes a truck going back down."
"Yeah I can hear it."
"Strafe a la derecaha, to the side of the road."
"Here good?"
"Yeah now wave."
And I step forward to keep my balance as I toss my arm up to wave in the direction I hope is the truck, and I hear a splash around the area of my foot. So I pull it back quickly.
"Well, now they know you can't see in that thing."
It is always a bit of the fun to see how long you can keep those around you outside the Fold, before inviting them in.

We sauntered up to the Tarabita with our Mindfolds up on our foreheads. And El Capitan asks after his friend Angelita, but Ramiro tells him she no longer works here, but is still in town. El Capitan explains how he saw Angelit and Ramiro on television in the States. Some travel show that went across the Tarabita and filmed these folks running the machine. The Tarabita is a double wide ski lift car that you face each other in and is suspended by a cable the thickness of my scrawny forearm, powered by something akin to a lawn mower engine and operated by the pilot who stands on the outside and holds on. El Capitan got to ride for free as Ramiro told him he was a Guide of Mindo, having brought a few folks through here, and often was given the honor of piloting the Tarabita.








There was something about crossing that chasm that put us right in the line of fire of inanity, because as soon as we got off on the other side, El capitan went under the lean-to for waiting passengers and asked for my knife and started sawing off the legs of his pants. "Even though these are my good khakis that I wear when flying, I just need some shorts right now."
"That's why I am carrying a pair of shorts in my bag." Even fools know some things!

From this came an impromptu photo shoot in the Andes...





This one I call "Rogue Therapist"

En Mindo

El Capitan had made it clear that this was his town off the beaten path. The buildup to this consisted of talking of Casa de Cecilia and the Tarabita, where Angelita worked and would let El capitan drive the Tarabita, which is the cable car that goes across a pair of cables, much like a ski lift, only instead of going up a mountain, it goes from one peak to another over a river-cut valley in the Cloud Forest to another peak. More on this later.


So we leave for Mindo on a bus which takes us to Media del Mundo, a tourist-oriented experience that is placed directly on the Equator that I can't tell you much about because El capitan just talked his way into the place for the ATM, avoiding the $2 charge, where he was able to get money out of my account but his was in lockdown because he tried to use it out of the USA. Then the adveture began.
We walked across the street from the attraction to thumb a ride to Mindo, because we didn't want to take the bus the rest of the way into the Cloud Forest, we wanted to hitch with a pick-up truck to ride in the back for the view. This took about half an hour until a fellow about our age with an empty pick-up truck came along and stopped for us. He actually asked us if we wanted to ride in the cab, but we both hopped right in the back.

The ride took about an hour, so of course, this happened.


The scenery was amazing as we plowed through clouds and around mountain roads much too fast and often on the wrong side of the road. We pulled up on a dirt road off the main road where the driver told us that we were pretty near Mindo and offered for us to see his house if we didn't mind the 1 km walk back to this main road. We went for it. The house he and his pregnant wife live in is in the middle of the Ecuadorian coutryside. He built the house himself and they both work as biologists studying the forest. The house itself was an amazing loft-style open air home with the downhill side, we are still 3-4,000 meters up in the Andes, of the house is almost completely glass. We didn't stay long because the drive to his house was observed to be more than the suggested km. And he (can't recall his name) wasn't able to give us a ride because he had to study. The hike back wasn't too bad even though I had my nifty pack double full and all on my back while hiking thru the thin air.

We reached the main road which fortunately had a bus stop right at our road's terminus into it. Funny thing about busses in Ecuador is that they are not always well-labeled and often just have a person hanging out the door to holler the destinations as it passes you and you better hail it quick before its gone; most especially because we are in the middle of a straightaway downhill stretch that declines at least a thousand feet before turning. We watched a few busses fly by, and tried to simultaneously hitch a ride the rest of the way. Neither of these things working we decided to hail the next bus and just ask when the 'Mindo route might be by...it, of course, was the Mindo bus. So we hopped on. Unlike the first bus, my large pack didn't fit in front of my seat, so I had to put it in a seat by itself, which worked because there were empties, but it was the first imperfection of my bag. El Capitan left a large amount of his items in Quito with Pablo at his hostal, who is full of impeccable trust. I, on the other hand, wanted to bring the full bag so that I could try it out on overland travel.


I liked Mindo better than Quito from the start, "this is more my speed," I told El Capitan as we were walking thru the town the first evening. For a start, there is about 1/10,000th the number of people here. We went straight to Casa de Cecilia which was full of a group of tourists who seemed to be a school group of high school kids. So began El Capitan's ranting against the growth of tourism in Mindo, which just last year had been off the map. Cecilia had a young lady lead us over to her sister's Hostal and during the walk she stated that she was going to go to the University in Quito, to study the industry of Tourism. El Capitan, your dream of a hideaway town in Mindo is fast being fed to the generation growing up now.

After securing the room, we headed straight to Fuera de Babylon, where I ate freshly caught Mountain Trout straight off the bone, with, you guessed it, plantains! The ahi, each restaurant has its own version of this salsa type hot sauce that is on the table in a bowl, was delicious, better than most I have tried -- not too many onions. But then the same group came in from the hostal next door and filled the restaurant, we finished our cerveza grande that the waiter would go and purchase from the store next door each time we ordered one, and hit the road.

Then came the puntas. Sugar Cane distilled into fire water. We went first to a convenience store and bought a small bottle of water. El Capitan started dumping the bottle out on the ground, and I hollered "just like an American," which got the bad part of his attention. I drank most the rest of the water so we had an empty bottle, because if you don't bring your own bottle it comes in a bag like you bring a goldfish home in. So we paid 25 centavos for the small bottle full and bought a pack of cards for ten times that amount, because "trust me," said El Capitan, "there's just somthing about puntas that makes you want to play cards (we never did make it to the card game).¨ He led me around the streets to a gravel pile where we sat under the streetlight to sip the puntas. HA! After my first gulp I told him "no more of that juice until I have something to wash it down with." And so I bought my first Coca Cola of the year. Didn't really help, just made the sweetness sweeter and the burn worked in some evil synergy with the Coke chemicals so that the next morning I knew what I had done. But before the morning came, we wandered back into the main street and sat to watch about 15 people, mostly high-school aged i'd guess, play futbol in the road. I sat there talking about how in just a minute I was going to join in, but after a ball was kicked towards us and I missed it from the curb, El Capitan's laughter explained my dexterity better than I felt it. "I really was hoping that you were going to play futbol last night with your adept movements on the sidelines, I could not wait to see you get shown up by girls half your age!" But that was not to be because we had finished at least 10 ounces of the puntas and sleep was soon to come.

Saturday night

So we broke down and went to an American-oriented restaurant. We expected to pay greater than $10 for our meal and drinks, each! Around here that's gourmet cuisine.

As we are sitting in the second story of this restaurant a double decker bus passes by with a horn and drum section in the second story and partiers hanging off both deckers. Its the party bus, El Capitan explains, but its only really worth it when you can get on the top level.

Between the first and second party bus, I noticed a Security Guard, they are hired all over the place to secure stores and restaurants and wander the sidewalks, who was ducking behind a bush 2 feet tall in a planter 2 feet off the ground. He has no clue that i am watching him as he busts a can of beer open really quick and downs a good gulp. Then he pulls some pills out of his pocket and hits another deep swig to swallow down the meds. This is all on the sidewalk in the downtown/L5P area of Quito where everyone is rocking the saturday night. Then he dumps the last of the beer into the planter and saunters off to direct a car to park in a space that ends up being too small for either side door to open and let people out...

And if anyone is wondering, shyness does not go away even if you can't speak the language. If anything it makes one more selfconscious about the silliness that one speaks out loud to others. Which all in all has spent me towards the inwardness and writing that i started an over-borders trip with the intention of in the first. Introspection is the mother of intention (or at least it sounds good).

Tomorrow we leave Quito and start some adventures outward bound. Don't have a clue what might happen next. I expect to take some photos or at least get confounded between lack of language and geographic knowledge. Nonetheless, a good story will come of this nextness!