Our toilet flushes twice

I bet YOU don’t have a toilet that flushes twice!  Everyone is always asking if the toilet water spins the other way here, 20 km south of the equator, but usually the person asking can’t remember which way their own toilet spins, and neither can I.  On that issue, I think it has more to do with the design of the toilet, but I’m not sure.

We have a more interesting phenomenon.  Sometime in the last couple of months the toilet in our main bathroom started flushing twice.  You know how some people can’t sneeze just once?  Our toilet flushes, pauses, then flushes again.  It’s perfect for when you flushed, then suddenly remembered that you wanted to blow your nose and were hoping to also get that flushed down before it’s too late.

I was thinking about trying to video it, but unless I dyed the water it would be right up there with a video of a snowstorm at night for clarity and drama.  If you want to check it out, come visit!

Three-Dog Day

A couple of months ago we awoke to find that our landlady Kathy, who lives downstairs, had gotten a third dog. This was shocking and dismaying. But first, some background.

An early post, Dog Rallies, was partly about the two mutts Kathy already had when we got here. They each enjoy barking, but in different ways. Jake likes to bark at passersby but is quizzically quiet around us. Jake, on the other hand, still thinks we are intruders, enemies, six months and more into our residence in his territory. His bloodcurdling barking and lunges at the gate are truly terrifying for a dog that weighs just fifteen pounds.

Perhaps I need to clarify. Yes, for some reason both dogs are named Jake. What I forgot to mention is that they both have second names. Jake Sweeney is the white brillo pad dog who is silent around us. The psycho (and he may be truly psycho) floppy-black curls one is Jake Farley. Perhaps, though, passersby-barking Jake Sweeney might live up to the Demon Barber appelation in his own way: Kathy keeps them separated at all times or Jake Sweeney will attempt to rip psycho Jake Farley limb from limb.

We kept hoping Kathy would get rid of one of the dogs (preferably the psycho Jake), and she always talked about how one or the other was supposed to be a temporary thing.

So when Nora showed up, we were a little freaked. Kathy explained: Nora was to provide company for Jake Farley and calm him down. Did we roll our eyes? Not in front of Kathy, of course, but the way we saw it, you don’t fix too many dogs by getting even more. Plus, we’d had a history of ineffective strategies in trying to calm down Jake Farley. First, Kathy would soothe him until we could pet him ourselves — surely some sweet patting and ear-scratching would convince him of our general goodness and lack of ill-will. But no. The slit-second Kathy moved away, he nearly bit our fingers off while resuming his insane barking. Next, we beseeched him with doggy treats. This didn’t work either. Then Kathy read in a book that we needed to spray him with water, and she got us a little sprayer (like a Windex bottle, except made of cute, orange plastic in the shape of an upside-down carrot). This worked for about two days until he realized he could back up 6 feet and keep up the earsplitting barks.  Finally, I started opening the gate and chasing him down the side of the house growling.  This was the most effective so far.

But now there is Nora.  An adorable cocker spaniel puppy.  And Jake the maniac Farley loves her to pieces.  It really seems to be working.  And now, besides the hummingbirds, we have another animal entertainment out the window: Jake Farley and Nora wrestling their little hearts out, and then sleeping curled up together.  Sweet!

Holy week in Colombia

Only a month or two behind schedule, here are some highlights of our “Spring Break” (what does that mean on the equator?) trip to Cartagena and Bogota, Colombia in March, 2008. Cartagena is a beautiful colonial city — the old town is completely walled in from back in the day when Sir Francis Drake was trying to attack the city (you can bet the residents of Cartagena weren’t calling him “Sir”!). Everywhere you looked it was gorgeous, and the weather was thankfully hot, just what the doctor ordered after months of cold and wet in Quito!

Bogota was cooler (but not as cold as Quito!) and cosmopolitan, with vibrant street life and some great museums and restaurants. Here are some images from our visit.

Cartagena Pictures

Here is a video of the shark feeding frenzy (a still photo is in the Cartagena slides above): we took a boat from Cartagena to some nearby islands for a day of Caribbean sand and sun. Part of the deal was to go to this aquarium, which featured a guy feeding “pens” of different kinds of sea creatures. The craziest event was the one featuring these really fat sharks.

Here are our Bogota pictures, including the amazing Botero museum. Botero is Colombia’s most famous artist, and perhaps the world’s most famous living painter. Our favorite restaurant in San Antonio, Texas (Rosario’s) features huge replicas of some of Botero’s sympathetic yet critical paintings of big, fat people.

Here are pictures from my rock climbing adventures at Suesca, near Bogota. I got to go two different days, with two different Colombian climbers that I had met a month before when they were visiting my favorite climbing area near Quito. Suesca has over 400 routes of varying length, both bolted routes and trad climbs (where you place your own gear as you go). The Columbians who showed me around, Gonzalo and Ivan, were extremely generous and justifiably proud of this great climbing area.