Feliz Navidad! and Feliz Año Nuevo tambien
I´m in Montanita. I´ve spent the past 4 days here and although I didn´t think I would stay up until New Year´s, the energy on the streets has changed my mind. For the first time in my trip, I feel like I am where I´ve always dreamed of being. I walk barefoot all day. There are stains on my clothes, and I don´t care. During the evening, I see street performers. There is juggling, fire dancing\spinning, hula hoops, miming, you name it, and all the while there is certain to be one or two barechested boys with long black hair drumming on hand drums on the sidewalk. Or someone playing guitar, someone singing. There are many artesans that travel from town to town selling beautiful handmade jewellery, I think of them as gypsys. And I had Christmas dinner with a group of them! I´ve met quite a few people rather quickly, a little to my surprise, and almost all of them South American, spanish speaking. I have spoken very little english in the past few weeks, even my thoughts are starting to generate themselves in Spanish. That said, topics of conversation are still quite limited, but I´m getting the hang of it, and I feel both surprised and grateful for being accepted within this community despite my lack of things to say...it makes me think, ah, so maybe Cynthia was right. My presence is enough. It says more than my mouth ever possibly could..
Probably the most amazing thing about the people here is their generosity. Things are not viewed so much as ´mine´ or ´yours´. For example, at home, if a group of people go out for drinks at a bar, everyone orders ´their´ drink, sits down, and drinks ´their´ drink. No such thing here! Everything is shared. And the party goes on all night, any presence of police seems unexistant, beer is drank openly on the streets, joints passed around circles on the beach. But don´t get the wrong idea, I´ve been enjoying being clearheaded, and in a place like this, simply being open to the energy is a little intoxicating. So yeah, I was invited to a house which this crazy lady named Luna owns and rents out to travellers, on Christmas Eve, and it was a really cool experience. Plates of food were passed around, some with cutlery, others not. I´d grab a piece of fish and a Patacone off a plate and much on that while I waited for the next plate to come my way, where I´d have a spoonful of beans and some more rice. There was singing, guitar, drumming, flying dreadlocks spraying beer craziness.
How do I experience it all?
It feels as though my self has been stretched out to a point where it fell back on to it self, and now I am experimenting with crossing the boundry between 2 different consciousnesses.
That´s all I can say for now, I think.
Today I had to move from the other hostal I was staying in to a ´dorm´, which is actually an open air attic with dinky stained mattresses lined up all along the sides, and a big wooden box with a rusty lock to store my backpack in... and today, let´s see, what will I do? The sun is shining bright, I think I might lie on the beach for a while.
So long!

Well, today it has been exactly one month and one day that I have been travelling. I have been moving south on the coast now, from town to town. I started with San Lorenzo, way up north, close to the Columbian border. And what I found there was a culture I had not expected to see in Ecuadar, which is that of the African Ecuadorians. It was by far the most intimidating city I´ve been in, probably because of the seemingly unwanted glares, but also the coolest. crumbling. the best way to describe it would be that. The people are very dark, and very beautiful. The city also struck me as one of the poorest places I´ve been in, but I could be wrong. Dusty, humid, sea smell. Fishermen in rubber boots, frayed, worn out buttoned shirts, lean in crumbling doorways near the pier, or are sitting around an old wooden table on the sidewalk. I see one, two, three people! sharing a bicycle. Young boys peddle tricycle rickshaws hauling fruit and fish, brown skin gleaming with sweat. Woman turns over plantains on a sidewalk grill, steam blurs out her face. And I, standing on the balcony of the Gran Hotel, observing it all, letting the gentle wind warm me after a cold shower...I took a boat from San Lorenzo to La Tola, a tiny fishing village quite similar, where I spent a night. The only reason I stopped in La Tola was to experience the boat ride. There are no beaches on the northern coast, it´s all mangroves, so no swimming, but it feels like the jungle. The first half of the boat ride, nothing spectacular. It was raining, and it was this tiny little boat with wooden seats, totally packed with people, and for most of the trip I was holding up my part of the tarp we´d been given to unfold and use as a roof. But the second half of the boat trip, after I changed boats in another village, was fantastic. A great rickety boat, that I only had to share with a couple other people, with a little roof and a real old cranky driver guy, who I was nonetheless quite enchanted by. Slowly we move through the river passageways through these mangroves, and I see little old houses and huts built on big sticks, rising off the ground, what are those called? In La Tola I got a ride in an ambulance, Ecuador is full of surprises!. to the one hostel in town, with an english speaking man, who owned it and also gave me a little tour of the town which went kind of like this..Here is the gas station, walking, here is a restaurant, walking, here is the other gas station, walking, here is the other pier. The hostel was filthy, and I think the bedding was infested with ferocious invisible biting insects. I am still scratching. But it was a nice place to be for a day. And I walked to an even smaller fishing village down the road and...well I can´t describe it! But it was really cool! But as I worked my way down, that all kind of faded pretty fast as I reached the thumping tacky bamboo style thatched bars that line the beach strip in many of the coastal towns farther south. It sounds like a real party from my hostal room, but it really doesn´t feel like one..I escaped for a couple days, and kind of spoiled myself a little, at this really beautiful place called Playa Escondida which means hidden beach, owned by a Canadian woman, and I had a lovely room and what felt like the whole place and the whole beach to myself. I took long walks while the tide was low, climing rocks, spying on crabs, staring at snails )I have a curious fascination with creatures with mucousy bodies that can attach themselves to surfaces) collecting broken rejected sea treasures the waves have spit up and abandoned in the sand, staring out into the waves, feeling wind on my face, in my body...At times it has felt I am the only human in the universe. Lately the only people I´ve spoken to are the people who work in the hostels I stay at, or work at the restaurants I eat at, but I can´t say I feel lonely. Today I am in Canoa. This is a very popular surfing town, so there´s loads of white people.It also means higher prices in restaurants. There´s a good vibe here though. Sandy streets, bleached hair, and plenty of stray dogs, in fact there seems to be a pack of dogs that run around the beach, one always trying to hump the female. It´s interesting to see dogs sticking together like that in a group, I stare at them. I find myself wanting to be closer to animals, but I am not supposed to pet the dogs on the street! I held a skinny kitten the other day that was begging for a piece of my fish in the restaurant I was having dinner in. Then I let her lick my plate. Then I washed my hands very thoroughly. Hanging around on ocean provides endless entertainment in a way, but the thing is, as I determined today, I don´t really like swimming in the ocean very much. The waves feel violent to me. Like I´m being knocked in the back of the head every couple moments. You can´t actually swim! But I´m going to continue on this path for the next couple towns and then headback into the highlands, but looks like it´s going to be christmas on the beach for me this year...alone..ahhh well what can I say.

I can´t believe this. I have just spent an hour and a half writing out this incredibly detailed entry of my travels thus far and then accidently hit the power off button on the keyboard instead of the backspace and lost it all, and now I am really discouraged...I can´t even begin to retype that all. But I want you all to know how I´ve been doing. I feel kind of bad for not really being in touch with anyone...But I will say you have all been in my dreams. Never before have my dreams been so full of faces. I have met many people, but at this point in my journey, I feel it is right that I am completely on my own. I am learning what it truly means to ´be with myself´. This being with myself is not at all the way I have perceived ´spending time alone´ in the past. I am learning to make peace with myself. To let go of the internal conflict, knowing that there is nothing to resolve. All I can do is listen. This is possibly the most beautiful thing I have experienced here thus far...And I can´t even begin to describe the beauty of the Andes. I spent the last 3 or 4 days in relatively remote indigenous villages that surround what is probably the most spectacular facets of nature I have ever witnessed, the beautiful crater lake of Quilotoa. After immersing myself in the natural and eternally peaceful surroundings, and being in contact with the beautiful and friendly indigenous people, I felt as though I have regained my trust. I was having a bit of a difficult time with myself before. I feel content, even during the hours spent staring up at the ceiling of my miniscule hotel room...
And I wanted to say a thank you to all of my family whose love I often ignore, for loving me. This sounds so cheesy written out like that, but while on a bus from Banos to Latacunga, after having a difficult night of feeling upset at my experience, angry at myself, nauseated with my endless internal banter and questions, I saw all the faces of every person that morning who has loved me, does love me, and I was amazed at how many there were, and...I don´t know. I felt really grateful and uplifted and special. And I wanted to say a special hello to my precious brothers!! Hi guys!! Isn´t your sister so cool for doing this?? Haha, I LOVE YOU!!
oh, and i guess i could really sum it all up pretty easily by saying i have mostly just been walking around...

Ode to Quito!

Hello all! I´m sorry, I don´t feel like saying much, but here is an ode to Quito!

Quito,
you have charmed me with your colorful pigeons and your spirited clouds,
Your crumbling balconies, your fountains, and your eerie courtyards
You have charmed me with every mystery that lies beyond every hole in the wall
and above all you have charmed me with your song,
of the blind accordian player on the street
and so mournful are the voices of the singing vendedoras on every street corner
the woman who walks up and down the cobblestone street
on a bad leg
and with a bucketful in her arms, she sings
papaaayyyaa, papaayyyaaa
just as though rocking
a dying child
to sleep

Goodbye Quito.
Tomorrow I move onward to Otavalo.