A Much Needed Explanation

So, I have learned that before putting a picture of a half naked guy in a speedo and workbelt on one's website, one should at least qualify it before (or in this case after) doing so . . . . I don't know who that person is. He's not my friend, or any friend of any friend that I know. We found him running through the forest in Banff, and recognizing him as we did, as a rare form of wildlife, I thought I should take his picture. It happened to be Amy's birthday at the time, hence the title of the picture. Amy, however, forgot to bring him home with us, and considering the recent cold weather we sincerely hope he is ok. Or at least as ok as he can be.

Amy's Birthday Present

Pictures and Dreams

It is always amazing to me how quickly an experience fades into the distance. I have to say that it all sort of feels like a long strange dream now. But I have pictures of it, so perhaps it did actually happen. Back at work - 4 days are done, so I am now on days off. Hard to believe last week at this time I was in an airplane! Like I said, it all feels a little surreal. Now I'm back to the day to day things like cats and cleaning, and trying to stay warm. I did miss my bed though, that has certainly been a treat to return to. Hope you enjoy the photos. :o)

Emnlyn

Jungle Volcano

View from above the jungle canopy.

Butterfly

Yes, that's a 2x4 its walking on . . . I said they were big!!!

Sunset on the Rio Napo

Dr. Guerrera and Me

Home Sweet Home, for a moment anyways . . .

Hello!
Thought I'd let everyone know that I have returned safe and sound and only a day late! Ended up spending last night in . . . Texas! That's right, I was in Texas for the night. I was very careful about what I said and managed to escape with no permanent damage, although I could hear a slight drawl in my English by the time I actually got on the airplane. My flight out of Quito was delayed which in turn messed up all of my subsequent connections, but American Airlines was nice enough to put me up in a hotel and feed me. Now I'm back, and I'm cold. But other than that it's all good. Keeping with my inability to stay in one place for long I'm packing a little bag and heading off to Red Deer for the night. A certain fuzzy and (very) fearsome mammal has requested my presence. So off I go, leaving behind three grumpy looking cats and two big bags of stuff in my kitchen!

Hope you are all well - see you very soon!
Em

And I´m off . . . to . . . Texas?

Yup, I´m goin to Texas. I´ve always wanted to vacation there. Nice place I hear. People are friendly and openminded, and tend to breed intellectually advanced national leaders that speak good English.

I´m overnighting in Dallas because my flight from Quito has been delayed 3 hours, thus screwing up all subsequent connections. So if ya´ll thought it was funny thinking of me with all those big scary bugs, than you should have an equal amount of entertainment imagining me with my new friends in Texas.

:o)

Emnlyn

PS = I have no fixed plans on being picked up from the airport, so if anyone out there feels like it, my flight American Airlines 2081 arrives in Calgary at 1440hrs Wednesday afternoon . . . email me.

Sunshine and Farewells

I find myself in another internet cafe in yet another beautiful little Ecuadorian town. My jungle adventure is now behind me, as is my time in Ambato with the Robles family and the people at the hospital. I am spending my last couple of days in Otavalo, a little town north of Quito, with the hopes of doing some last minute sight-seeing and maybe some Christmas shopping too.

I hope you all enjoyed my journal entry from the jungle, yet another addition to the growing list of embarrassing bug stories. I managed to survive the whole experience relatively unscathed, and learned rather quickly that it is the small biting sandflies and mosquitoes that present the biggest threat to my safety. The state of my legs and arms was renascent of a certain traveling companion after being in Ayutthaya Thailand who was quite confident that mosquitoes didn´t like to bite her and therefore didn´t need repellent. I made the mistake of not reapplying said repellent after swimming, an equally avoidable situation. The days were spent cruising up and down the Rio Napo, one of Ecuador´s largest rivers, in a motorized canoe, and enjoying all of the sights and sounds of the jungle. Just in case there are people out there who still disbelieve the ferociousness of the bug life I watched one of the large green grasshoppers bite a human trying to get a closer look as well as fend off an inquisitive puppy. It was quite a sight to see a grasshopper turn and face this dog, bowing and raising its head threateningly and finally have the pup put its tail between its legs and back off sheepishly, leaving the giant hopper the undisputed king of the dining room.

My last couple of days at the hospital were wonderful too, although it was very hard to have to say goodbye to everyone there. I took lots of pictures of them all and will hopefully have the opportunity to visit them next year. I took the Robles´out for dinner on Friday night and on Saturday morning they took me to the bus station, video camera rolling, for a tearful and heartwarming farewell. I will miss them all dearly, and appreciate deeply everything they did for me. I have an open ended invitation to re-occupy my bedroom and am officially a member of the family. Although the words were difficult, I managed to express how much I appreciated their kindness.

So now I am in Otavalo reminiscing and wandering through the streets. I can´t believe that the month is already gone and that I am returning to Canada in less than 48 hours. I hope its warm there - or at least if it isn´t that there is a good base of snow at Lake Louise . . .

-Emnlyn

PS - Have managed to locate a very useful turtle, but am still having trouble with the badger situation. Perhaps the badger will have to settle for warmth and comfort instead of companionship. And Vexation - the google translator is not always an accurate way to communicate in another language - but I appreciate the valiant effort.

What phobia?

Journal Entry, 30OCT04

So I seem to have embarked on an inadvertent ¨cure my fear of bugs¨ adventure. When I was walking down the very beautiful roadway into the cabañas I saw some very beautiful and very large butterflies. During the course of my walk I started to think about how much bigger the butterflies were than the ones at home. Of course, this lead me to think about how the other bugs are probably proportionately that much bigger as well. I immediately decided that this was not something I should think about . . . Kind of like the mystery meat, its just better not to ask questions.

Well my ability to delude myself further came to an abrupt end just before supper when David (Seattle) showed up with his digital picture of the ¨large¨ tarantula he found walking up the railing to the cabaña. There was no frame of reference for the photo so again I managed to convince myself it couldn´t possibly be that big. So the very friendly and helpful staff went and got one for us to see. And the hairy 20cm (no kidding) ball of spiderness crawled around on the one guy while they explained how not dangerous it was.

Dinner was tasty and I very much enjoyed being able to speak English, and did very well considering the array pof bugs that joined us for our meal - the 12 cm green grasshoppers were definitely the highlight. Its ok though, I thought to myself, they can´t get into my room. So with my escort of small children I braved the wild and made it safely back to my cabaña. And I made the mistake of looking for bugs. So now I´m lying here on my bed frequently checking uip on the status of my new, way to close, friend the 10cm+ long centipede that is living on my ceiling. He has only moved once, apparently he is mor comfortable sleeping slightly curled up than as previously stretched out. I don´t think I have ever told myself how OK I´m going to be as I have in the last twenty minutes. The rather ?humorous? part is that I have very few options at this point in time. I can´t exactly leave and go find myself some 5 star hotel in the Arctic, and my only option, really, is to deal with it. I suppose that since all the big bugs in the world do have to live somewhere, the jungle is probably a fairly reasonable place to be finding them. And after having recently made the mistake of moving something in my room, I have decided that being on the bed is looking like a good option. Unfortunately this is one situation when being alone is not optimal. One idea I recently had was to use my sleeping sheet over my head in order to not leave any exposed skin, but I think I´d be too hot.

OK, the centipede left - through a crack in the ceiling. Apparently I was boring him. The cockroach just poked his head out, but realized it was light and backed off - which leads me to my next option of leaving the light on - which, although annoying, may stave off the creepy crawly things. This option is, however, not very conscious of the solar energy situation. Perhaps by ¨Deep Woods OFF¨ sprayed on the legs of my bed will keep things from crawling up them. I´m kind of thinking that ¨Deep Woods¨ is not particularly synonymous with ¨Deep Jungle¨. There . . . Six hours of protection guaranteed . . . So if I set my alarm for 4am . . . . . .