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Elevation: 1,800 meters above sea level
Jan. 3rd, 2005 09:17 pmHappy new year everyone.
I celebrated the new year up to my ankles in the Pacific Ocean, watching deminude surfers act out some kind of primal Lord of the Flies trope--some savage dancing with the shaking of the surfboards ensured round a campfire on the beach.
My friend A. arrived in Quito a few days beforehand and after a couple of days of running around the capital we set out for the beach, which was a Campbellian odyssey in and of itself, involving buses, things squealing in canvas bags on said buses, hostels that resembled nothing so much as insane asylums in Foucauldian atmosphere and decor choices and the final leg of the journey, from Santa Elena to the beach where we kept being told that the beach was "twenty minutes away" over and over. After about five consecutive reassurances that it was "veinte minutas mas" I started flashing back to Dark City where the main character keeps dreaming about/trying to go to Shell Beach which does not really exist because it is a false implanted memory. "Shell Beach," I kept muttering to A. after each subsequent 20-minute prognosis.
Upon arriving in Montanita we decided that we had stepped through the looking glass (Happy Hour Every Hour! It was like Teatime at the Mad Hatter's house but with caiperinas) and that we were in the matrix of a videogame. Mostly this was due to the fact that "the tourist matrix" was contained to four blocks where everyone congregated, you kept passing by the same people and you could literally walk out of it and then back into it. We designated signifiers that reminded us that we were "in the matrix"--like insipid hats purchased by many misguided backpachers made out of...like...animal skin but really really tall like those hats that the Russian fools wore but also with a steeple (?) that looked like a dread was protruding from the contraption. Our activities were pretty much contained to:
1) swimming in the ocean
2) eating shrimp in various forms (breaded shrimp, garlic shrimp, grilled shrimp, shrimp ceviche etc)
3) drinking mango shakes
4) eating mango
5) flossing after eating mango
6) trying to determine whether we had progressed to the next level of our videogame (for example, on our second night we discovered a whole other street that was also a part of the matrix; everything that transpared assumed the narrative contours of an obstacle course, challenges and rewards and Ultimate Goals like our strong commitment to ushering in the new year stoned on the beach, which was nearly sabotaged by a Battle with the Giant Cockroach that transpired shortly before midnight).
7) Arguing about whether Baden-Baden was a concentration camp after it was a popular resort (I was right, it was) and how to say "lobster" in Russian (A. kept saying it was "omar" at which I kept giggling and saying "like Omar Khayam!"--that issue is still unresolved).
Now we are back way above sea level in a quaint mountain town. It´s chilly here. I kind of regret not having a field site by the beach, but I know the sun would melt my brain. At least I am not a masochistic heliophile like A. whose field site is somewhere around the Arctic Circle. Tomorrow morning a volcano trek on horsies at my insistence then the rainforest and shamans (i.e. the working part of this working vacation).
Pictures to follow once I get back to Quito.
Over and out.
I celebrated the new year up to my ankles in the Pacific Ocean, watching deminude surfers act out some kind of primal Lord of the Flies trope--some savage dancing with the shaking of the surfboards ensured round a campfire on the beach.
My friend A. arrived in Quito a few days beforehand and after a couple of days of running around the capital we set out for the beach, which was a Campbellian odyssey in and of itself, involving buses, things squealing in canvas bags on said buses, hostels that resembled nothing so much as insane asylums in Foucauldian atmosphere and decor choices and the final leg of the journey, from Santa Elena to the beach where we kept being told that the beach was "twenty minutes away" over and over. After about five consecutive reassurances that it was "veinte minutas mas" I started flashing back to Dark City where the main character keeps dreaming about/trying to go to Shell Beach which does not really exist because it is a false implanted memory. "Shell Beach," I kept muttering to A. after each subsequent 20-minute prognosis.
Upon arriving in Montanita we decided that we had stepped through the looking glass (Happy Hour Every Hour! It was like Teatime at the Mad Hatter's house but with caiperinas) and that we were in the matrix of a videogame. Mostly this was due to the fact that "the tourist matrix" was contained to four blocks where everyone congregated, you kept passing by the same people and you could literally walk out of it and then back into it. We designated signifiers that reminded us that we were "in the matrix"--like insipid hats purchased by many misguided backpachers made out of...like...animal skin but really really tall like those hats that the Russian fools wore but also with a steeple (?) that looked like a dread was protruding from the contraption. Our activities were pretty much contained to:
1) swimming in the ocean
2) eating shrimp in various forms (breaded shrimp, garlic shrimp, grilled shrimp, shrimp ceviche etc)
3) drinking mango shakes
4) eating mango
5) flossing after eating mango
6) trying to determine whether we had progressed to the next level of our videogame (for example, on our second night we discovered a whole other street that was also a part of the matrix; everything that transpared assumed the narrative contours of an obstacle course, challenges and rewards and Ultimate Goals like our strong commitment to ushering in the new year stoned on the beach, which was nearly sabotaged by a Battle with the Giant Cockroach that transpired shortly before midnight).
7) Arguing about whether Baden-Baden was a concentration camp after it was a popular resort (I was right, it was) and how to say "lobster" in Russian (A. kept saying it was "omar" at which I kept giggling and saying "like Omar Khayam!"--that issue is still unresolved).
Now we are back way above sea level in a quaint mountain town. It´s chilly here. I kind of regret not having a field site by the beach, but I know the sun would melt my brain. At least I am not a masochistic heliophile like A. whose field site is somewhere around the Arctic Circle. Tomorrow morning a volcano trek on horsies at my insistence then the rainforest and shamans (i.e. the working part of this working vacation).
Pictures to follow once I get back to Quito.
Over and out.
