Car back – Wanna buy a car?

As usual, I’m not punctual with my blog entries.  We ended up getting our car back just a few days after that last post.  I asked for the so-called documentation of the so-called new brain, but then paid the deductible without further ado, because I wanted the car back in the worst way.  Since I’d seen the car’s electrical system in major disarray during its long stay at the mechanic, I tried to go over everything before we drove away.  First, the left headlight didn’t work.  Then it was the dome light.  A couple of screws were missing that held down the console around the shift lever.  One by one and fairly quickly the mechanic fixed those things and we drove off.  By the next day we realized the fuel gauge wasn’t working, so we took it back and they fixed that too.  In every case, they just needed to plug in something.

So now the car works, and seems a little more powerful than before!  So, you wanna buy it?  Since we’re leaving Ecuador in June, we need to sell it.  Here’s the link to the attractive, you-too-could-visit-gorgeous-remote-places-if this wonderful-vehicle-were-yours action photos.  Thanks to Academia Cotopaxi former colleague E.J. Lux for the “pictures of car in amazing places” as a marketing tool idea – he made his junker Russian Lada look like a supermodel last year.  We’ve had a couple of people interested, but nothing firm so far.  Tell all your Ecuadorian friends and expats!

How much of your car did they steal?

One Thursday night in late February the guard didn’t show up to keep watch outside “La Cueva,” the little climbing gym I go to once a week.  When I left the gym, our 1997 Chevy Vitara (Suzuki Sidekick) had been broken into, though it seemed like only my hat and jacket had been taken.  But it wouldn’t start. Under the hood quite a few things were missing:  spark plugs, distributor, air filter.  Oddly, the battery was still there, and they hadn’t taken the stereo.  The next day I found out the most expensive piece was actually taken from under the dash: “el cerebro,”  the brain – the car’s computer.  Thus began a big headache.

We had the car towed to the school (where there was a guard to watch it all night) and again towed the next day to the mechanic the insurance company authorized.  This was February 26th.  Now it’s April 13th and we still don’t have our car back.  It’s always something, real or invented, that gets in the way.  After a couple of weeks, my ever-upbeat contact at the mechanic, Santiago Alban, told me over the phone that they had all the parts but the wiring harness.  I went over that afternoon to see what they had, and not one single part had been delivered for my car.

They never could find even a used harness. Finally they were able to find just the little multi-wire plugs that go into the brain, which would then need to be soldered one wire at a time to the sixty or so severed harness trunk wires, all without making a single mistake.  So they’d been at that for a week or so.  Every time I called Santiago, he assured me we were just days away from getting our car back.  “This afternoon we are going to start it up.”  “Tomorrow it will be running.”  “This afternoon we are getting the diagnostic tool we need.”  Finally, “you will have your car for Holy Week.  I am sure of it.”

They couldn’t get it to start, so our Vitara was sent by tow truck to another mechanic.  Upon returning to Quito after spring break, I had an email from the Insurance broker that the car had been tested by the insurance representative last Tuesday and was going to be sent that afternoon back to the original mechanic.  So I got right on the phone and found out that it was still at the second mechanic’s shop, and they would not give it back to the first mechanic until the bill had been paid.  So that’s where it stands.  Who knows when we’ll get it back.

I can’t believe it never occurred to me that once the car was fixed there could be a whole new set of roadblocks before we actually got the car.  Is the car actually running?  Is it really fixed?  When will we get the car back?  Are the mechanic and insurance company people in cahoots to defraud the insurance company and us?  Are the used brain and harness plugs the very ones that were stolen from our car in February?   Will we have to keep taking the car back to the mechanic to fix ongoing problems?  Will we even get to use it before we have to sell it in June?   Will anyone buy it from us?     Stay tuned!

San Blas Islands, Panama

Technorati Tags: Panama,Central America,Travel,Islands,Paradise,Vacation,San Blas,Kuna Indians,Kuna Yala,Comarca Kuna Yala,Caribbean,Beach,Franklin Island,Franklin’s Island

  We’ve been remiss not getting this post up since we got back from Christmas Break…  We discovered possibly the most idyllic place we’ve ever been – Franklin’s Island, Panama in the San Blas Archipelago in the Caribbean Sea.  Deeply shaded by palms, fringed with white sand, surrounded by crystal clear waters, and with only 15 people total on the whole island, it was almost comically perfect. 

We spent three days and nights with no shoes, just laying around in hammocks and padding around on the water’s edge. 

Franklin and his staff called us to meals by blowing a conch shell.  No electricity, no running water (bucket baths), just a sand floor in a bamboo hut, and three squares – all for $17.50 per person per night. 

The slide show should give you a pretty good feel for the place, but nothing’s like being there (for best effect, click on the show to link to a slightly larger version at slide.com).  Although we try not to go anywhere twice, we’re seriously considering a return visit on our way back to the States this summer.

I enjoyed my conversations with the guy who runs this place, Elixto Franklin.  A Kuna Indian (the Kuna own this whole semi-autonomous region), he received this responsibility almost a year ago and found the place a shambles.  He’s done a lot to improve the place, Cabañas Tubasenika (but called Franklin’s Island by everyone who stays there).  His place has no website or any other publicity, so I want to pass along his cell phone number: (country code 507) 6540-5478.  We wish him all the best.

Laguna Cuicocha

Technorati Tags: Ecuador,South America,Crater Lake,Crater,Lake,Hike,Travel

Our ever-enterprising 7th grade Science teacher, Diann, got a bunch of us together at the end of November to do a hike she’d had her eye on: Laguna Cuicocha (Guinea Pig Lake).  A couple of hours north of Quito, near the famous market town of Otavalo, here we have yet another gorgeous crater lake, except that this one has two islands in the middle, separated by the thinnest of reed-filled channels.  On a previous occasion we’d taken the boat around one island and through the little slip between them, which was really nice.  This time we were determined to walk the rim.

Fourteen years ago on our honeymoon we’d been to this lake and started hiking counterclockwise, so I had a vision based on that half-hour walk that the whole 5 hour trail would be a naked, baking-in-the-sun ridge hike.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  We started out walking through sun-dappled pine forest with gorgeous views of the lake.  Yet my favorite part was that the trail didn’t offer constant, satiating views of the lake, but ducked away from the crater rim for a time, through scrub, cloud forest, and paramo, then swung back to offer a fresh but equally gorgeous perspective. 

Quilotoa Loop & Blacksheep Inn

Technorati Tags: Ecuador,Quilotoa,Blacksheep Inn,Crater,Crater Lake,South America,Travel,Hiking,Planeta.com

We’re backin’ up now… to November of 2008.  We’re dying to show you our Winter Break pics (hint – there’s a canal there), but we should probably catch up on fall trips first, before we forget. 

Our friend Beth Rogers and her boyfriend Shawn invited us to go with them for a long weekend to a remote part of highland Ecuador.  We’d been hearing about the Blacksheep Inn, an award-winning sustainable ecolodge, ever since arriving in Ecuador.  Ron Mader, who runs Planeta.com and specializes in eco-tourism, told me that it’s one of the best in the world.  This trip is a giant counterclockwise driving loop that’s positively spectacular. The mountains are tremendous, and covered top to bottom with patchwork quilts of farmland. The mostly dirt and cobblestone road snakes from ridge to valley along precipitous drop-offs, leading to a serious conundrum: should Joy drive and scare herself to death going 15 miles an hour (turning the 6-hour drive into a 12-hour drive), or let Luke drive and scare everyone to death going 50 miles an hour (turning the 6 hour drive into a 4 ½-hour drive)?  The creative compromise? Joy took herbal tranquilizers to survive Luke’s driving; Shawn and Beth just held on tight.

Blacksheep Inn consists of an assortment of beautiful buildings all up and down a steep hillside (the driveway is four-wheel-drive only), with commanding views across a giant valley. Toilets are of the composting variety (but don’t stink at all), some of the water is harvested rainwater, and each room has a great little woodstove that heats up the room in minutes.  Dinner and breakfast are delectable, vegetarian.

The scenic highlight of the loop is the namesake crater lake, Laguna Quilotoa.  Amazingly, this lake was formed by a giant eruption relatively recently (February 4, 1797 to be precise!).  One day we hiked for about seven hours from the edge of the crater back to Blacksheep Inn: the first thirty minutes were along the rim of the crater. Five and a half hours were various angles of downhill; the last hour was straight up.  There’s no describing the views and the immense scale of the Andean landscape.  It was simply spectacular.