Piscean

...Beach of Canoa












[As I sit to write all this in my journal, I have put on this George Harrison album, Brainwashed, which I have never tasted, the first song has hooked me:
"If you don't know where you are going
Any road'll take you there"]

I headed into the ocean with my backpack and shirt and sunscreen underneath and stood for ten mental minutes at least, bandanna'd and all; allowing the motions of all other beachgoers to wash away from me as the waters waved across my ankles, slipping the sand out from under the feet and my heels sank into the sand much quicker than the fronts of my feet as I gave my time and legs to the sea. It lapped across my decisive steadfastness, sampled my flesh and footmind; things were whetted and wetted and like sinking into the sand, my mind sinks into my inclinations and past -- into my depths.

[As I am writing this in my journal, George Harrison is singing
"I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul
I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

And I’ll be swimming until I can find those waters
That’s the one unbounded ocean of bliss
That’s flowing through your parents, sons and daughters
But still an easy thing for us to miss

Sometimes my life it feels like fiction
Some of the days it’s really quite serene
I’m a living proof of all life’s contradictions
One half’s going where the other half’s just been

I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul
I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul"]

The Ocean wants me Today, Mr. Waits.

I strip down to my swimmies, stow my pack and wade into the shallows. This is the smoothest beach i've been to, so few shells and rocks and things to confound my feet into feeling the old fears; feet, the awarest part of the Piscean body (Pisces signs: Sun, rising, Mercury and Venus...sorry I was late being born mom, but I had to time it right!) I dig deep into the stillness in my depths and see that under the crashing craziness of the uppermost ocean is a deep stillness I can feel with my feet. I lift them from the seabed with bouyancy and armstrokes. I speed the swimming as a wave comes at my face, and I dive down into the realm of Neptune's mysteries. Coming back up beyind the wave shows me an oceanfull of them. I start catching them with my body, kicking quickly to grab something beyond hold -- to be grabbed by the velocities of the waters caught up in the wave -- and am churned and flipped. My bouyancy acting as insitgator of lost upness. Not even the Mindfolding i've done has prepared me for this type of unseeing.

I have swallowed water many times, but this time was to the chagrin of my lungs and I had to take a breather from holding my breath. But, even with a stomach of salty waters I re-commit to riding The Waves with El Capitan coming into the water late in his latest shorts concoction of sewing the legs of his pants up underrolledneath. We fought the waves by standing strong and even punching palmfulls of energyballs into overhead crashing waters that could crush us at wrong angles. We body-surfed the flows, and many times I had to duck out early as I was too far up the crest of the wave for fear of going over with the foam, into the crashings. But this fear is a real, rational fear that I am kinesthetically determining in the moment; not the fear i've been carrying over the last 10 years or so...that of the Deeps as exhibited by me quavering at just the idea of frolicking in rivers and lakes even, let alone Mother Ocean, anywhere I could not see my feet, is the best way I can calssify it; imagining the beasties and creepy crawlie feelings to be snakes, nibbling animals and the most marvelous of all, Sharks. This was the way I both pushed away my Piscean nature and feared for its existence against the jaws of the deep.

I am floating on my back, laughing as a child- receiving flashes of my life's pleasures and committing a re-orientation of mind via this delicious Buoyancy, my body's disengaging from the gravity, even if ever so slightly and the power of the ocean's waves, goodness and my o my...
I have Rode the Shark into the deep beyond. My path is clear (not determined, but open), my self is reunified, my mind has folded and Grace is salty and floats me with immense swells where the sky opens up and drops away suddenly, and I shudder and sometimes there is a crash and I may get upended with sand in my caw; but I am healing in tune to the pulsings of the worldflow.

I felt little difference as the change occurred within me, because it wasn't an immediate flip of a switch, but the culmination of times spent, most recently with El Capitan Rogue Therapizing me into Mindfolding the falls of Mindo, the waves, the spent slick surfaces of bubbles finally making their energies' way to the shore of this beautiful town, to wash my feet, my piscean pleasure and pain of fear of the Ocean's deeps. My deeps getting released from the dam behind which i've trapped some of the more powerful methods of living I could incorporealate. The change completes into my soul. So the simple act of bringing this all into focus with the every of my senses brought my soul back to me. I find surprise in how recognizable this integration feels.


["You've got me between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" comes on David's ipod. George Harrison is in the room with me. This is beyond me. Even I am at awe at this concretization of thoughticles; and Teilhard de Chardin laughs from the corner of the Noosphere]


When we got back to David sitting by the coconut cart where they will hack a coconut to just the right spot where a straw can be stuck into the milkhole, 50 centavos for the freshest and most nutritious drink on earth, El Capitan saw he had missed a phone call on his cell so he needs to get his computer to the internet.

Later, at a beachfront 'staurant just behind the ramadas, my face burns, though the rest of me seems to have absorbed the sunblock properly. El Capitan is servicing a client in the States from an internet cafe just down the road from this beach. I am staring at this magnificent ocean that I have walked along a thousand times as a thousand different people, and here it is the same ocean as Always.

My's elf & mind & soul all folded together today.

We met in the waters of the Ecuadorian pacific and put the past behind me. For so long now i've proclaimed my greatest fear to be Sharks and the devils of the deep blue sea; in fact many times i've said it is my Only Fear.
So if i've broken through this fear...will others rush in to fill me?
Am I washed free of fear?
Is my acceptance of the world's deep an increase of the complexity of integration into the psychic matrix of Being nearering my soul to the centrality of eternal Love and heartRending bliss through the immersion in the fires of my own fear?
Will this meta-fear, into which I've poured all my urgings away-from-harm, burst open as a pinata and scatter all the little fearlings of my soul into the world again?

I care not as I am with the Sea again.


[a note on the usage of the word Psyche (and its derivatives such as Psychic or other words I makeupify using it as the root)
"The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends."--CG Jung
"The deeper 'layers' of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat further and further into darkness. . . . they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body's materiality. . . . Hence 'at bottom' the psyche is simply 'world.'"--CG Jung
Just so you know I'm not talking about mind-reading...more like Mindfulliving]

Mascaramente

Taking cue to color the night with the frame of reference inspired by the bat that flew into the screenless house a bit ago - it had a definite pattern it wove between the two lights, spirals and infinite figure 8s and me cheering its mosquito-gorging habit. I slip into the Fold and make my way downstairs and to the gateway of the courtyard. I can hear the group of folks across the street, but am not ready to engage as my Spanish is small and my introversion is large. I stay in the threshold for some unmeasured amount of time, with the sparse conversation washing over me but not receiving much of my attention unless its in English, which means its directed towards me.
"Mindlab, they want to know what you are doing..."
"Tell them I am working on echolocation," and I crane my neck out like a giraffe to twist my head's ears about the doorway. "How many of you are there? I thinks its four."
"Including me?" El Capitan asks...which means its a group of five.
"Yep."
"Nope."
I sink back into the darkness.

El Capitan approaches me from across the road inserting himself into my fold.

"Hey Mindlab"
"Yeah"
"You're kinda freakin' people out a little bit."
"Well that is not what is wanted"
And so I turn back into the courtyard and slip the Mindfold off to navigate quickly up the stairs and into my journal.

Why didn't I just take it off and approach the group of folks? Disperse the enigma and integrate the personhood; step into their camaraderie and move on with the night?
Because i am weak. I'm out of my 2008 element. I don't really want to stand outside next to a truck and drink. I want to drink then do Mindfolded cartwheels on the beach, I want to walk down the beach forever in the moonlight. But I am tired. I want to sleep in a bed, not on the padding of wicker furniture on the floor. I am worn.

The full frontal Mindfold approach into this night disproved the something I hollered from the hammock earlier this afternoon when the spirit moved me, "the Mindfold is not bound by language barriers." To which El Capitan responded from the kitchen "Who said it was?"
I found the statement, temporally reversed, added effect and cause into occurrence and deja vu.

Manta in the Morning

[Insert gratuitous awesome photo of self El Capitan took in Quito at the International Phenomenon called Shooters.]

El Capitan and I are on the bus to Bahia waiting for it to leave the gate. We've been here for 1/2 hour between buses and i'm strung out from riding the sharkbus all night without even knowing we had gotten on it.

It all started at the Quito station when I was concerned my big bag would not make it into the luggage storage so I kept pestering the employees for to stow my luggage. It was finally time and as retribution for me being a worried gringo making their midnight shift that much more buggy, they had me carry my own bag from where they had set it down earlier and stow it myself. Fine, so long as it is on the same bus as I am.

We all clamored on the bus and organized into assigned seats. El Capitan is saying "this is the nicest bus i've been on in Ecuador, i feel funny," as he is maneuvering his carry-on bag so the juice in one mesh pocket and the vodka in the other side's mesh pocket won't slide out over the 9 hour ride. I got the window this time, and since we are driving all night, its not for the scenery, but to lean up against while sleeping; we try the seats reclining and they lie almost completely flat, so sleeping appears it will be much easier to achieve than i had first feared.
[I am in a place called the Surf Shack, where i can get both coffee & whiskey and internet along with breakfast. There are a couple townies working the place, cooking my sausage and eggs, and smoking and singing with the Beatles; one gringo just walked in with a waterproof ipod and grabbed his surf board that was sitting against the wall behind me. Almost unplugged my laptop with one of the fins. He turned to apologize and saw my face below the bandanna and realized that I was pretty easygoing. His smile turned to a laugh as he saw the half-finished whiskey shot yet to be poured into the coffee. Pretty neat town. Let's get back on the bus...]

I get to situating ipod, in the left pocket, thread the phones under the warming shirt and up to the ear holes, bandanna off-gulp-because the knot presses into the back of my head so i can't lay back, Mindfold onto the forehead, 2.5mg of Melatonin sublingual under the tongue and curl up El Capitan's sweater into a tube to be my neck pillow so the head doesn't roll with every bump and turn, I slip my earplugs into my right pocket, next to the change purse, for ease of access if the ipod doesn't work its minimagic.

Selecting the pre-made Chill playlist of Eno's smoothest, The Habibiyya, Moby's Ambient and the like, I find that the most relaxing of these sounds have no way to drown out the roar of the bus engine which, even though these windows don't open, roars and rumbles into my ears past the phones and garbling the fragile ambient musics of my favorites. So I crank up the volume, which is a paradox to the floaty sounds drifting among my ears.

This is working for the first short while until we pass the city toll booth and exit Quito, where the television comes on and without lifting my fold I determine it is some sort of Knight Riderish action flick that contains untold thrilling car chase scenes judging by the routine tire squeals and minimal dialogue I can't make out, or truly, don't want to pay any attention to; focusing the slivers of my mind that are still awake towards the magic album "If Man but Knew" which I have moved onto infinite looping. The mideastern acoustic has enough waves of sound to pierce thru the surrounding rumbles enough to make it followable thru the night's churning sonic juttings from the beast's engine, brakes and televised inanity. I settle into the slow groove they are digging out of the communal psyche's malleable thoughtstuff; I let my eyes weigh heavier and heavier.

But the action flick is stunning me at intermittent blasts and I am forced to turn the tunes up again. El Capitan is back from trying to take the empty pair of seats behind us when we stop outside of town for the last batch of riders. So we're back to bumping elbows and knees. I can tell we leave the paved road when the bus - heavier than my last mental image of God - is hopping along the riveted road as if we were on the moguled slopes of the Andes, not the muddy roads. Its all downhill from Quito's 9500' to the port city. The momentum behind us makes the curves around the mountain sides full with gravitation. With the switchbacks hidden from us riders by the driver's cabwall, the movements occur as sudden jerks and we are all swaying in our varieties of sleep. I am teetering with a feather's smoothness on the edge of dreamdom so i don't want to tense to fight the convoluted spirals we take around these mountainsides. I suggest to the mind awake that we are on a roller coaster and letting my body go limp around the center of my being is the interest gathered from all the Chi work i've invested into me.

The melatonin is kicking in and my brain thinks my brain is telling my brain its time for my brain's thoughtwaves to settle into sleep sinking synchronization into the spaces of time being taken to arrive each swerve of the bus at its condition of physicality, the feelings become less and thicker, slower. Adjusting the ipod brought a second trickle of sense into curve with the bus' swervature helping to line mind with the body's predicament.

Walking the line between waking and sleep for 7 clock hours means i have been absorbing the Habibiyya's one album something like ten times through. A fleeting connection between this notion and the time mother walked in on her teenage son lying asleepish on his bedroom floor with White Rabbit on repeat, and her illustrating confusion at my preferences and my confusion from being roused by the outside world from my inner respite merged into that oddness where one can't follow another into Life -- swings the line i'm walking like a tightrope into awareness. Sensations come rushing in to fill the higher crest of brainwareness amplitude with swimming, swaying sensations, but overall the total darkness held deeper sway. Changing from The Habibiyya to Songs of Green Pheasant (as introduced to me by the Illuminated Mar-Mar), though it lasted only a single listen through after the sweet sublimation of drone of the lasting night that Man almost Knew settled the curves into the brain's creases. I needed an album that was entrancing enough to drift sleep along this rocky road but sharp enough to cut through the myriad of busship noises as we rolled thru the moon's night. The answer came from the Deep Forest. First of the glorious albums of my musical youth. My original Morpheus.

Awakening in a foreign town after an entire night of off-road bussing up and down the Andes just short of the ocean was one of the least noticeable most extreme experiences i've had.

Chinwig

The fourth (unsolicited) chinwig grab occurred last night. El Capitan and I are in an Irish bar finishing the night off early with a last beer. He is Mindfolding the patio while I am looking over the terrace feeling the friday night's pregnancy of revelry readying to explode like streamers into the dark night. The neons colors and overlapping of loud musics thickening the air. I am caught up and floating more than standing, until a short frenchman speaking english that I am not listening to has breached our night. He's trying to cheers us, El Capitan makes a deft move of raising his glass within millimeters of a perfect, mug-centered clink with the man's. Now he is turning his fragmented attention to my distance and pulls me back into my body with harsh sounds, which I find to be him speaking to me when I turn to give him an empty look.

He tries to raise his glass to me, but I am more interested in the distance between things right now, than bringing them together. So I turn away from this intrusion. He doesn't understand or thinks I am being funny, but I speak not a word and turn back to the night that has swelled more in my absence. He's trying again and I am wasting valuable thoughtspace ignoring him so I turn again to say No, when he grabs the chinwig and gives me a swift waggle.

That settles it, I hold up my mug to his lowered glass of some sort of liquor and cocacola drink on ice. This makes it simple to clink my glass at a higher angle than his and pour a good dollop of my beer into his drink. In his condition there was no way for his eyes to reach all the way down to his hands to catch this so we both turn away happy.

I go back to staring at the sky above the city and hear it calling me to dreams. We leave our beers unfinished and head back to the room.

Seriously, what is with this? Four men have waggled me by my chin in the last month.
(How can I get the ladies to join in?)

The short list

Things that I could do without in Ecuador:
* Cheese, I love thee, but ye loveth me not here.
* Kissyface greetings. Especially the taking-leavings where I am not as able to slip away unnoticed without brushing cheeks and making puckering smoochy sounds.
* Smoking in most every establishment
* Walking around at rush hour, there are no emission regulations, on vehicles, as discernible by me.
* Haggling is the closest approximation to the opposite of my methodology I have yet experienced.
* Overrun of dogs and consequent lack of cats. El Capitan tells me the dog population has decreased dramatically and he misses that (Dogs they rule the night). But to me there are still too many; they just wander the street which so far is interesting, but i'd trade it for cats.



Things I hold in the highest:
* Fresh juice, everywhere all the time. This is heaven for what was an Odwalla-for-breakfast (at lunchtime) drinker.
* Plates of the day. Since I can't really understand Spanish at talking speed, I usually view ordering Almuerzos (lunch) or Meriendas (dinner) where you get a soup, juice, plate of rice, meat and veggies/beans and a desert for less than $2 as a gamble and sometimes i lose but its fun with chance!
* Not getting carded for anything! Finally I appear old enough.
* The climate right now is perfect warmish in the days then cooling at night.

Welcome to the MindLab

Alright, El Capitan made me promise I wouldn't talk about the injections I had to give him for his back pain. So don't ask.

Into the Fold

Once at Shooters I seemed to have stepped into a voidhole and fell into myself. Deepression and ignoring everybody all night except to order a drink or two. Even when folks were referencing me or speaking to me directly I was ignoring. I was feeling not thrilled being in Quito after the idyllic Mindo, but after a couple of hours of this deep silence something clicked in the back of my head or somewhere near the back of the head and I decided to move into interaction.

Just a bit ago when I was writing the outcome of the JW Marriot escapade at the bar here, one of the patrons tried to speak with me as I was writing. I ignored the words because my head is already full of them and that's why i'm writing can't you see that? So I got to the end and the click and I said,
"thank you for your patience, Atlanta and No."
Like I said I had gotten to the end of writing at that moment but faked it a bit more to let her mull it over. Yeah, I'm a player, but its an entirely different game i'm into.
"Wait, oh, let's see...where are you from and, wait, no hmmm. I can't remember the second question."
"I set down my pen, removed my glasses and was rubbing the bridge of my nose..."
"Uhm" she's had many beers at this beyond midnight point "oh yeah, are you tired?"
"Correct." And I pull the Mindfold down from my bandanna over my eyes.

The world shrinks as the majority of my sensory intake is reduced to a vast black (with the rare faulty pinprick of light from the nose area that needs to be revisited by the manufacturer; might just have to buy the whole company to fix this issue) not a complete eradication, mind you, for when the eyes are open within the fold they are still active and the brain portals they feed are still open accepting the darkness as if it were the picture of the world currently surrounding the mind. The initial urge is to fall into this security and act upon it as if it were truthed. But in this instance the dispellation of such comfort was in the shape of a crowd's roar at something I mentally picturated as a whisp of draft by my cheek that did make me reflexively jerk my neck and head back a half an inch.
"The bartender's sister just tried to kiss you." El Capitan is chuckling and probably rolling that 50 centavo piece across his knuckles while standing behind the bar.

I sat on this for a moment trying to imagine why the initial gambit into this Mindfold was for a stunningly gorgeous girl to sneakify me in such an abrupt manner. We certainly have not exchanged any meaningful words across the language barrier; now you can see why my theory of how stunning I look in this attire is brewing! So I realize I need to play this one cool and I turn to the asker of drunken smalltalk questions, and say "can you tell her to try again?" I sit back with a lilt to my head and stroke my chinwig. She starts "por favor," and I jump in both hands on the bar "I didn't say please" and flash that looney smile that I can't hold back at times. If they are going to be introduced to the Mindfold I ought to make sure its memoric. Too many beers girl swings her voice hole towards my unseeing sound receptors and I focus in on her head which says "it doesn't translate without the Please." I could care less, I've made the ruckus, now I settle into listening for silent movements and am rousing laughters with my dodgings that most times were for nothing, surely not kisses.

The girls of the bar enjoyed this and similar sillinesses narrated by El Capitan's experienced Seership over the situation. So much so that they invited us to go dancing. Which is when the following Mindfolded recordation of the conversation on the previous page of my journal captured the hilarity of the night's merciless pouring of darkness into the Mindfolded open to receive such nonlumination. The next day the sightless writing was easy enough to make out because it took up the whole page.
"Wanna go dancing with us?"
"I didn't even go dancing with my wife."
"You have a wife?"
"Not anymore, I wouldn't go dancing with her."

For pete's sake, its Reggaetone. Have you ever had to listen to that schlop?

Antihystemeticos

We have rode the shark into the JW Marriot, where El Capitan and I are posing as guests to try to get him some anti-histematicos for his ankles and elbows are swelling in massive quadrants of bug bites which are itching a great many times more than mine from the same flying ant/fly that literally slices open your skin and latches onto the large drop of blood that swells out of this invasive technique.

We came in with the plan of walking past the front desk and him asking "so i'll just see you in the room?" to me and me acknowledging that and heading for the room. But once we got to the door and the doorman was straight out of Cinderella, with the coattails and all, I feared they might require some sort of clearance for the elevators, so I just said "yeah i'll see you up there, but i'm gonna make a call" because I saw the phone sign.

I stood in the booth for what seemed to be 5 minutes talking to myself about a deal gone south and how I was going to have to stay an extra day or two to take the clients out to a meeting and no i'm not seeing anyone on the side how could you even think that? I'm in the hotel right now, and so on. Once I figured he had the time he needed, I ventured out into the vast open air lobby and was hoping he had not gone through with the plan of meeting me on the 6th floor somewhere. He came trotting up and said "they sent me to the gift shop but they didn't have any. The front desk is looking for something now."

We are a few days past laundry day without having properly observed laundry day. I have the patched up pants (mother did a fine job, i'm just saying), my journal sticking out of the back pocket and the bright yellow bandanna dangling long all pirate style over my redneck and the Mindfold strapped on the forehead just because, well two reasons, you never know when you need the Mindfolded and let's be honest, it looks good on the bright colored bandannas on my handsom head (See Dr. Mindlab post for a good illustration of what I mean) and I haven't shaved in a month.


El Capitan is still wearing Frankenpants and his badass leather jacket and even though its 11pm on a Sunday night and all the pharmacies are closed which is why we are trying to swindle the JW Marriot out of allergy medication, he's got his flight shades on his head. So we are chilling with me writing this feet up on the coffee table wishing i had my ipod, and El Capitan is fiddling with his phone which is ringing. In my journal I am writing that he is faking a call that is all business-like so that as we sit in the lobby and he paces Frankenpants up and down the tile floor saying things like "I'll call him at 6am tomorrow, sir," and "oh of course, I know what is wrong its the (made-up sounding computer part name) underheating" I really did think he was just keeping the shark ridden, but upon further clarification it was in fact an actual business call beyond perfecto in its uncanny timing. But that's just how El Capitan rolls.

I am trying to look intent on intently writing all this down as he comes and taps me on the shoulder. I get up and he nods over his shoulder to the concierge who is following us to the door. I see that the VIP treatment is occurring so I adjust the Mindfold straight on my head and slip this book back in my pocket -- its my very first page in this new journal that is a size smaller moleskine than the previous batch which means it fits in my back pocket i never should have left it in the first place bigger is not always better -- and we head to the revolving doors, but the concierge steps in front of us to Cinderella's charioteer who leans his head much too far over for the top hat to stay on without adhesives and is nodding to the man's words to boot. That was when I knew this whole thing was a farce and I needed to keep my guard up. A bit too smooth. El Capitan is both listening to what is being said and translating it to me.
"He will send a car to pick up the goods from an open pharmacy or I can ride there. Then in Spanish "I'm just gonna ride there because I will want to meet my friend out after that."
And before we know it we are being usered towards a car that has been magically appearancized in the roundabout that nobody ever drives their own cars thru, but is only driven in by drivers. I take one look at the SUV and think of my thrilling experiences in Ecuadorian pharmacies and opt for trying to call the folks one more time (mom it was busy the three times I called on Sunday) before getting to that drink that we passed up for hopeful pharmacy journies earlier. I tell El Capitan this in as few as words as possible so as to not hinder his swift ride and I have to admit, a churkle which is a manly giggle, slipped out of my throat so I hurried away from the overcivilization and towards Shooters. But something got a hold of my idea machine and it came back with 'wait and wave to him as he's being driven to the pharmacia to get one last laugh.' So the car came around the circle and out of the hotel to pass me on the corner sidewalk waving with both hands and even kind of hopping like a fool to make sure he sees me. Which made the car stop. Whoops. I'm on my way crossing the street on the hopes that I don't get wrangled back into such a translatable drama, 'cause I sure don't want to get in that car.

So I am yelling over my shoulder "just wanted to get one last laugh in I didn't mean for you to stop."
"No no no," he's yelling back "it was perfect what you did. I was going to get him to stop at some point."
"But why didn't you just let him take you there?"
"Because he'll do it for a lot cheaper" and the taxi he had hailed as we were crossing the street stopped at his feet.

More Falls!

We hiked out of Mindo and down a dirt road. Everything is massive and verdant and beautiful and there were many places to take a photo like this one.















We followed banners across the dirt road into a banana plantation and up the hills. We passed a great deal of swingable vines. El Capitan became Indiana for a swing. We reached the first falls and I was lagging and when I came around the corner off the bridge of two bamboo poles strapped together, he had already scrambled to the top of the falls.





Having taken my time and the trail I had a less accomplished pose.










Even though these were the only falls pictured on the banner, we pushed on. Higher and higher up the mountain. We crossed the stream many times and I had to have a go with getting lost in the Mindfold as I tried to climb to a boulder for a pose. Getting back proved to be something of a trial. [video]

Up the mountain and up even more. El Capitan reached windedness and I scouted ahead. I saw what I needed to and returned with a peeled and unpeeled orange off the trees over the bend. I handed the unpeeled one to El Capitan and said "here's for a spot of energy until we get to what appears marvelous. Let's go."

"Have you tasted these oranges already?" El Capitan asks as he sucks on that beautiful orange orange. "Nope, I wanted you to have the first one."
He spits it out. My mind races, is there some poisonous orange disease in the Andes I don't know about? Have I just killed El Capitan? I better hurry up and taste mine.
I tear a hole in the peel, at least we'll die together. I suck the horribly sour juices out of the unripe orange. "Sorry, man. That's horrible." And we toss the oranges aside. Then this picture takes us.










As soon as you crest that last hill, you can see it. Its the biggest waterfall i've ever experienced alone (Niagara is huge but so are the crowds). Must've been 120 feet. But no more than a stream you could step across at the top. The pictures are laughably weak in the face of this fall's majesty.




















So I convince El Capitan (believe me, his antics are over-represented because I am more often carrying the camera, not because he is gullible or easily convinced of the potential hilarty that could arise from whatever we are doing) to go tag the waterfall. I am skipping the first set of photos, because when he touched the falls, he was blocking his own arm from the camera so it wasn't official. The second round he went in with Gusto, he was going to add this Cascadas to his repotoire of tagged falls and I was cheering him on...until he slipped and then I started laughing. He was right in the falls again.
















The face of a true Waterfall tagger.