Whaleing on the coast

Dear diary,

I haven´t really been writing for a while now. To be perfectly honest, not much happened for quite a while worth writing about. Marta, Yolanda and me have been working on the equipment quite a lot. It turned out that we mixed up two lasers and as soon as we found out, we were able to do some real experiments. This week we bought a ton of exotic fruit to measure on, some showed promising results. Other showed better to be eaten than measured. Since we received a rather rare scholarship for research on apples we are probably going to do research on apples, but also on bananas and avocados. Basically, we are going to investigate folk wisdom about fruits. Like if avocados ripen faster if they are put together with an apple etc.

Enough about that! My life goes on as normal here after a period of darkness where I was really homesick and tired of working. Vannesa and I are still doing great even though she has left me now. For a week she will be travelling around Ecuador as a part of her studies in tourism.

I am also getting some well-needed breaks from Quito. I am normally doing some excursion each weekend. One day we went up with the newly built teleferico (sw. linbana). I don´t know what it is called in english but it took us up to 4000 meter, that is 1200 meter above Quito, to enjoy the view. It was truly amazing, the view of the nearby volcano Cotopaxi in the sunset was breathtaking!

Another excursion, not nearly as exciting though was to fulfill my need of gokarting. There is one (1) track in Quito and it is not fully built yet. The other one is at Central de Mundo (the track almost crosses the hemisphere line). It took us three hours to get there, after asking people who gave us contradictive answers about the direction all the time. It is a little bit like that here, it seems like they rather answer you wrong or make a wild guess than not tell you anything. Once we arrived, it turned out there was a gokart track there but only for competitors…no one bothered to mention that little detail!

Well, finally after three weeks of longing and literally a dozen change of plans, me and my room mates finally went to Puerto Lopez which is on the Ecuatorian coast. It is known for having tons (stupid expression, I know) of hump back whales there in July mating and playing. Thus, whale porn lovers from all over the world come to watch them jump and such. There is also an island called Isla de la plata there which is known as the poor mans Galapagos since it has some of the animals from Galapagos there.

The first day we went on a tour to see the whales and the island (May Anita and Vannesa have never been to Galapagos). The whales were kind of a dissapointment, we saw two backs of the whales for about a minute and that was it. The island was more or less a reminder of how marvellous Galapagos was. So, when we came back in the evening we were kind of disappointed. Twelve hours of bumpy busride for two backs that just as well could have been a fat, dark-blue dolphin! Therefore we ordered a new trip the next day with a local fisherman (named Winston Churchill for some peculiar reason) who recently started whale tours.

We started out really optimistic but after one hour and still no whales we were ready to go home. But then someone discovered a whale at a distance, it was jumping and splashing as much as it could. When we came closer he and his whaless, whaleadonna, whaleita or whatever you would name her were finished with their…ritual. They posed a bit for us for about ten minutes and left. Happy with this we continued to a reef, snorkled some and then started fishing. The last time I was fishing was probably somewhere around the time when a mullet was cool and not retro-cool so I was really excited. I caught 3-4 fishes in 20 minutes only using a nylon string and a hook with bait. Finally, the fisherman invited us to his house to eat the fishes we caught.

A really nice and relaxing weekend was unfortunately ended with a horrible bus-ride back to Quito with cockroaches running around on the seats, sellers coming on the bus selling CHOOOOOOOOOOOOCLOS, CHIIIIIIIIIIICLES, PAAAAAAN etc. Hmm, yes dear sir. Thank you for waking me up when I finally had fallen asleep. I’d be delighted to have some meat dish that have been kept warm all day just for the sole pleasure of giving me some more trouble with my stomach…not.

There are now less than a month until my departure and I am awaiting visits (sw. storframmande) from Venezuela. Calle and Johanna are coming to visit me tomorrow. Calle and I had a plan with our mutual visits, to dive deep and climb high. The first we did in Venezuela. On Saturday, we are fulfilling the other when we are going to climb the highest active volcano in the world. Cotopaxi. It is also one of the most beautifuls mountains in the world I guess (see the pictures). The guide told me that only 40% of the climbers reach the top. I almost drewled when I heard that, a real challenge!! Then we are going to Amazonas next weekend. I think Calle wants a rematch with the anacondas after they almost made him invalid in Los llanos (a highly recommended episode to read on this website by the way, search for user Caldaman).

If…when, we become one of the fortunate 40 % I will let you know all about it here. If not, you will have my resignation as a mountain climber on your desk monday morning.

Over and up

Christoffer