wtf? are we a little bit biased here in new york times-ville??
i don´t usually go so far as to comment on such trivialties as "world news" in my ever-so-deep musings here. but seriously. have a look at this "frontpager" from today´s nyt website, and i just dare you to tell me this shit isn´t biased as HELL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/americas/20castro.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

seriously. ugh. i don´t want to get too worked up about it (because obviously that´s already happening some) but the suggestion that castro "benefited" from US sanctions, because then he could blame all cuba´s economic problems on the "imperialists of the north" (their quotes, i´d have just said it straightout)... well, i´m not all that objective either... but at least i´m radical. (and really, really humble).

SO! i made it to quito, minus the contents of my stomach! traveling the last half of peru with a couple of fabulous women made my last week of travels, during which i was worried i´d just be anxious to get to quito and settle in, really really awesome. i was really sad to say goodbye to them, but hopefully i will get to go visit them in their homecountries or wherever they end up (so many people have these fabulous sounding international lives...)

we went to two different beach towns on the northern coast of peru, both of which were great in their own way. the interesting thing about these beaches is that they are "left breaks" something we don´t talk about much in wisconsin, since there´s not a whole lot of surfing, but if you can translate left break into something those of us from the land of freshwater and snow would understand... well, it´s just really awesome for people who surf goofy foot (snowboarders wakeboarders, you know what it´s all about). traveling with two other women opened up the opportunity to meet lots more people... i tend to not talk to other travelers a bunch, unless they put in the effort, (me and my loner attitude these days), but it was really cool to meet bunches of people everywhere we went, and since we were together, it was easier to make friends with other people. it was hilarious, because the story of how we met, even though we acted like best friends who´d been traveling together for weeks, made everybody laugh.

completing this leg of my journey, buenos aires to quito, all by bus, was pretty fantastic. i don´t plan to make the trip again anytime soon (a lot of sleeping on buses), but it was amazing. i met so many amazing people, saw tons of amazing things, and well, had a great time. there´s no one thing that really stands out, it was all just pretty crazy and neat and bizzare at times.

i´ve posted more photos (i know, finally) with some captions. the best one is definately the one of ciara and i, where she´s pretending to dump a bottle of wine in my lap, which is actually what pretty much happened when we went out to dinner in huanchaco (delicious peruvian mexican food at the surf shop). the cook´s son, who was sort of a waiter, but really just wanted to flirt with us, spilled a FULL glass of red wine into our laps, and then decided that he would just wander off and play some music... it was hilarious. hilarious. we rubbed salt all over the spill, and it came out without a problem (i wasn´t worried, i´ve got this great skirt made by rossignol, yeah, the ski company, and it seems pretty indestructible). anyways the photo is hilarious.

pix here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2350255&l=96292&id=8602808

the three of us also traveled from Máncora, Perú (even more north than huanchaco beach) to Guyaquil, Ecuador. we took the night bus, which was scheduled to leave at 9pm (so it left at 10). we got to the peru-ecuador border around midnight, and made it through peruvian immigraciones in about 30 minutes for the entire bus... but the ecuadorian ones were not as easy. it was actually pretty fantastic, we were standing there, in line, in the rain, surrounded by puddles, at 130 in the morning, and right we ciara and i are about to get our passports stamped and get back on the bus... they decide they need to take their one hour break and turn off the whole system. no, they can´t just finish our bus. the bus should have come earlier. but the border is open 24 hours a day? yeah, except from 130 to 230 in the morning. (so, 23 hours?, no it´s open 24 hours they say). so we got to wait, a fabulous hour, until 245 (230 means 245, jamie you´d do so well here) to get through immigrations for ecuador. in the rain. christwagons.

so, the bus that was scheduled to get into Guyaquil at 7am got in at 930, but that was just fine with us. we had breakfast in the mall-like bus station, and headed into town. the crazy thing is that i was just walking around downtown guyaquil with daniela (my friend from sweden i´d been traveling with) and another guy from california who we met on the bus, and we ran into Nora!! i´d talked to her on the phone, but we didn´t think we were going to see each other until later, it was fabulous. crazy fabulous.

i stayed with nora at some friends´ house in guyaquil, and we went out for delicious (well, the first time) ceviche and cerveza ecuatoriana (pilsener, wow it´s amazing). the next day nora and i got up early and took a bus to quito, which i enjoyed, for the most part, except for the part where i was puking into plastic bags and we drove past an oil truck tipped over (and people not running away, which is what i´d have done, but running towards it, to get the oil in buckets. think of that visual), and another truck tipped over on the mountain road up to quito (toby, if you ever read this, you know where i´m talking about. eeeh)

our apartment is super cute, i haven´t taken any pix yet (because now it´s just strewn with my crap everywhere, which is driving nora crazy) but when i´ve got my shit a little more organized, i´ll take a bunch of photos and post them so you can see how beautiful the place is where we are living. i´m hoping to start some kind of job, hopefully something with a prof from UCLA that does research here, soon. it should be badass. it is good to be back in quito... i missed this place.