Well, it´s taken a while, but I´m finally back in Ecuador. Had a great travel day going from Buffalo to Newark to Houston to Quito. I was trying to escape most of a glorious winter in Bradford, but that never quite happened. When I arrived, the temperature here on the Equator was actually cooller than in Bradford!
Ecuador has been locked in a serious winter this year. That means rain. For at least a couple of months, with deaths and landslides all over the country. Lots of towns have been isolated because landslides have destroyed their only connection to the rest of the country. A couple of days ago a huge sink hole appeared (or should it be disappeared?) in a major highway interchange south of Quito. Even bigger than a Pennsylvania pothole. That´s it for transportation down south. And it keep raining. The weather is coming from the east (the Amazon) which is really rare and moisture laden. It´s just like lake effect but going in the opposite direction. Let´s call it rain forest effect. Nobody knows why it is happening, but I´ve heard peope attribute the effect to either global warming or President Bush.
Speaking of which, there is still a lot of tension down here over the Colombian attack on Colombian guerillas IN Ecuador. Sovereignty? What sovereignty? Now the buzz is that the attack started with a bomb or missile that could only have been fired from a U.S. weapons platform like an Apache helicopter. The thinking is that it must have been us because we have the smartest weapons. If a U.S. aircraft did fire something, who would have to have known? Hmmm. And we have a Navy base here in Ecuador.
Everybody is following our presidential election. The younger people I´ve talked to (young is relative – I´m talking about 30 -40 year olds!) are pulling for Obama, but wonder if an African-American is electable.
I´m in Ibarra right now. About two hours north of Quito on the Pan American Highway. Rainy and foggy the whole way up. Today is a settling in day. Visit with friends an colleagues at the local university, refamiliarize myself with the city after two years absence, etc.
I´m completely new at this blog stuff, so bear with me. Hope this is interesting to someone, or maybe a cure for insomnia.
