Under The Sea, Part Dos

I've been lucky in 2016. Actually I think I've been lucky my whole life but specifically this year I've had the very great fortune to have been snorkeling in two amazing locations on our planet on two completely different trips. This past February, I discovered multicolored fish in an extinct volcano off the coast of Maui just days after watching manta rays performing underwater acrobatics at night near Kona on Hawaii's Big Island. Last month, I hit the Galápagos. Along with a mask, snorkel and fins, and of course a wetsuit which is like my 2016 snorkeling security blanket.

The Galápagos Islands and Hawaii are both volcanic archipelagos located in the Pacific Ocean. The Galápagos sit right on the equator; Hawaii is a bit further north but still below the Tropic of Cancer. But below the surface of the ocean they are quite different. The Galápagos are mostly rocky outcroppings of a giant underwater shelf sitting right below the water's surface; Hawaii's seas get much deeper much quicker. What that means is that the depths of oceans to be found right off the coasts of Hawaii's islands don't exist in the Galápagos. Everything's pretty shallow and right there for us surface swimmers to see. That's a good thing. And what a lot there is to see.

In four days in the Galápagos, we got in the water and snorkeled on three of them: once at Kicker Rock off the west coast of Isla San Cristóbal; once near Isla Plazas; and finally a swim near the south coast of Isla Santiago. The pictures in this post, once again taken with my trusty GoPro, are from our first and third snorkeling adventures. Our time near Santiago provided us with the best shots and the most amazing experience.

Sharks circling below the surface of the water at Kicker Rock.

I'll admit I had some hopes and some anxieties about snorkeling in the Galápagos. My number one hope was that we would find some hammerhead sharks to swim with; my number one fear was that we'd end up in the water with some different kinds of sharks, ones that looked decidedly more dangerous than hammerheads. I'd checked the statistics on hammerhead shark attacks and found no record of any fatal encounter with humans ever; I didn't bother doing a check on all other species and just feared the worst. Of course, what I wanted most didn't happen; what I wanted least did. Isn't life like that sometimes? And of course, it was all OK.

We didn't waste any time swimming with sharks of the non-hammerhead variety and our guide Lorenzo seemed thrilled to see them. In fact, he seemed to want to get as close to them as possible and to make us go with him. Hasn't this dude seen Jaws? I get that these sharks are a lot smaller than great whites or tiger sharks but they still look decidedly shark-like and dangerous. But sure enough, there we were in the shadow of the split down Kicker Rock looking down in the water watching sharks circle. And there were a lot of them. Sure, none of them came anywhere near me but there were not an insignificant number of them about 15 or 20 feet below my flippers. Kind of freaky.

Kicker Rock, which got its name for its resemblance to a giant boot (I don't see it honestly) didn't provide us with much good snorkeling and it wasn't because neither of the snorkels provided to me were working properly. It's a good distance out off the shore of Isla San Cristóbal and its sides below the surface are straight down, which means no reef near the top of the water to watch fish feeding. The only place with any wildlife is the nutrient-laden channel between the split rock and in the mid-day sun the shadows cast by the rock make seeing anything much in the water all but impossible for those of us with less than adequate eyesight. Probably better for diving, which I don't do. Let's move on.

If Kicker Rock was a disappointment, snorkeling off the shores of Isla Santiago was fantastic. Here we found enormous schools of multicolored fish of multiple species feeding in the reefs between 4 and 20 feet below the water. And they were everywhere you looked and the ocean was perfectly clear that day which allowed me to shoot some great videos and still photos. We also got a great look at some starfish in a number of different spots. This was by far the best snorkeling I'd had in my adult life, which admittedly has a small sample size.

And of course there were more sharks. And just like at Kicker Rock, our guide (different guide; Omar this time) seemed obsessed with finding us some sharks. And this guy was hard core about it. Like chasing sharks out from below rocks near the ocean floor hard core. We found at least two mini-schools of Galapagos sharks, which are about six or eight feet long and look decidedly like sharks, which is a little concerning in water that shallow. My only source of comfort here was looking around at all the other food around me which seemed to me to be a lot easier to handle for a creature that size, even if the alternative (me) was the slowest moving thing in the water for several miles.

Indeed the only time I really got nervous around these things was when I saw a school of about 40 or 50 fish suddenly scatter right in front of me. I thought this had to be evasive action from a predator and I was right. About five seconds later a smallish sized sea lion zoomed past me in the water, oblivious to my presence, which was incredibly cool. Yes, I swam with both sharks and sea lions this August, even if I wasn't really so much swimming with them as near them.

Our snorkeling trip that last day in the Galápagos occurred right near an area where some penguins had been seen nesting recently. It would have been such a thrill to see penguins swimming in the ocean with us but just like we missed out on the hammerheads at Kicker Rock, we didn't find any that day off Santiago. Instead we had to settle for sharks and sea lions. Not too shabby I think.

That last trip took about 45 minutes to an hour and we were swimming and surrounded by marine life pretty much the entire time. It was certainly a lot more convenient snorkeling off a boat that we were staying on than it was in Hawaii, where we had to get up before dawn or wait until the sun set to get to a boat to take us out to a good spot. As it turned out, 2016 is the year I swam with sharks for the first time. And actually, if it's the last time, I'm good with that too. I'm OK doing this once with some friendly ones and quitting while I'm ahead rather than seeking a bigger thrill.

Shark week? Maybe not. But thrilling just the same.

Paris

So I realize I haven't yet finished writing about my trip to Ecuador (I still have one more to go) but unfortunately, I'm off somewhere else so that will all have to wait. Sometimes things just work out that way.

In the very first post I wrote in this blog, I talked about a commitment to myself I made way back in 1994 when I first got out of school to make sure I got on a plane at least once a year and go somewhere new. It's been one of the best ideas I've ever had. But I didn't start out on day one of my post-college career with that idea. That pledge I made was a result of almost not taking a vacation at all during the first year I worked and I learned a valuable life lesson in almost missing out.

My first year out of college was all about work, work, work! I was living in the tiny village of Cooperstown, New York working for $10 an hour starting to learn how to be an architect. The best thing about that job was that I got a lot of opportunity to grow my career and that I got paid time and a half for each hour of overtime I logged. And I made sure I worked a lot that first year, so much so that whenever any sort of idea of taking time off came up, I talked myself into the fact that there was too much to do at work and I just couldn't leave. As a result, I ended taking my 12 days of use-it-or-lose-it personal and vacation time on the last 12 business days of 1994. And you know what happened while I was gone from work? Nothing. The place didn't self destruct, nobody took my job and our clients got served just as if I was there. From that point on, I have never put work ahead of vacation. It's not worth it.

So where did I go at the end of December 1994 with my precious 12 days off? Paris. I booked the flight and hotel through a travel agent (remember those?) on Main Street in Cooperstown and it cost me pretty much all I had. I think the total for a flight out New York and a room at the Hotel D'Amsterdam came to just about $1,300 and it literally almost completely drained my checking account. I was actually worried if spending all that money was the right thing to do but in a move that was completely out of character for me at that time in my life, I threw caution to the wind and didn't look back.

I loved every minute of it. I have by no means been to anywhere near all of the cities on Earth but of the ones I've been to, Paris is my absolute favorite. Hands down. There is a sense when you are in Paris that you are in the middle of all human history and culture in Europe. There is no place I have been that is simultaneously so historic, so self-important, so cultured and so focused on being alive than Paris. On that first trip in 1994 I discovered the architecture of Le Corbusier and Hector Guimard (including riding the tiny tiny two person elevator at Castel Beranger); I fell on my knees in front of Auguste Perret's apartments on the rue Franklin (Perret is a personal hero of mine); got up close and personal with some gargoyles at Notre Dame de Paris; and pretty much existed on crepes from street carts.

Ten years after that first almost broke the bank trip, I went back. But this time in the spring and not with my last 12 days of time off at the end of the calendar year. If you have never been to Sainte-Chapelle right across from Notre Dame de Paris on the Ile de la Cité, I suggest you do so the next time you are in Paris (he says like he knows people who just randomly hang out in Paris...). I've been to any number of gothic churches in my life and nothing has been so spectacular as Sainte-Chapelle. The explosion of color is just amazing in such a small space. That 2004 trip featured my one and only visit to Sainte-Chapelle in addition to exploring art nouveau furniture at the Musee D'Orsay, eating entire meals of cheese and of course heading out to Raincy to visit Perret's Notre Dame du Raincy for a little hero worship.

So now it's 12 years later and I haven't been back to Paris since. And that's just too long. So next week, I'm heading back there; to where my love of traveling after graduation started for me. One of the things I find most wonderful about Paris is that there is so much to do and experience there that is mind blowingly awesome that it's hard to imagine ever being bored. On this trip I'm armed with a whole set of new experiences that (for the most part) I've not touched during my first two weeks in that city. Paris is the place. I can't wait to set foot in this city again.

Closing note: The photos in this blog post are from my 2004 trip to Paris and I just have to say what was I thinking with my personal appearance? I'm wearing clothes that are clearly far too big for me and they are either making me look overweight or I just was. I'm a total mess. I've talked myself into the fact that I look better at 48 (today) than I did at 35 (then). Maybe I'm kidding myself. Regardless, I vow to never wear an entire wardrobe that is too big for me ever again. Au revoir.

The World's Best Brownie

Let's start this blog post with a quiz. Quick: name a staple of Italian cuisine, an Irish vegetable and a Swiss confection. Did you say tomato, potato and chocolate? I might have if someone had posed that question to me. It seems logical, right? I mean what would pasta and pizza be without the tomato? Didn't the lack of potatoes in Ireland in the late 1840s and early 1850s cause a mass migration out of that country? And what are the Swiss known for if not clocks, chocolate and refusing to get involved in anything that doesn't concern themselves even if they should sometimes exercise a higher social conscience?

Know what all these things have in common? Before the sixteenth century, the Europeans didn't know about any of these foods. They had no clue. They only got a hold of these three by "discovering" the Americas. I find it strange that each of these foods is now so undeniably linked to countries that appropriated (and that's a kind word) them in the last 500 years or so.

So why am I quizzing people about food when I'm supposed to be blogging about my August trip to Ecuador? Well, it's certainly not so I can write about tomatoes and spuds; those things grow just about anywhere you plant them in the United States where I live. But not the cacao plant, which requires wet, tropical environments to thrive. And Ecuador as it turns out is one of the top ten cocoa producing countries in the world. I've never tried to go seek out a cacao plant on a vacation before but I thought that might be worth doing on a trip to a country so involved with supplying the world with chocolate.

Cacao fruits growing in Mindo. The top photo shows a cacao fruit, dried cocoa beans and some cocoa nibs.

Now it wasn't always this way in Ecuador. The Incans, who had expanded their empire north into Ecuador from their home base of Peru just before the Spanish arrived, were not a big chocolate civilization. Nor were their predecessors (in other words the folks they conquered) the Quitu. No, to get at chocolate's roots, you need to look a bit further north to present day Mexico where the Aztecs, and before them the Mayans, held the plant and its fermented and dried bounty in the highest esteem.

Before I go too far, maybe I should offer a little bit of a disclaimer before going forward. The tone of this post might make the Spanish acquisition of chocolate from the Aztecs seem like a friendly exchange of goods. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When the Spanish arrived in the new world, there was a lot that blew their minds and the tomatoes, potatoes and chocolate were about the least tempting of what the Aztecs and Incas had in their possession. I'm sure the food (which also included the never before seen crops of corn and peanuts) was great; but the real prize for the Spanish was the seemingly incalculable quantities of gold and jewelry that the natives possessed.

I'm sure it didn't take long for the Spanish to start planning how they could dispossess the locals of their wealth, either by conning them out of it or just slaughtering the lot of them. They ended up using sort of a mix and match approach here and despite the vastly superior numbers, neither the Aztecs nor the Incas were any match for the Europeans' guns and horses, neither of which they had seen before. And if the shooting and the mounted conquistadors didn't do the job, the smallpox, influenza, cholera and all manner of other diseases took care of most of the rest. Eventually they got everything they wanted, which was pretty much all of it.

Right before (and I really do mean like immediately before) they decided to start killing and duping the locals, some of the Spanish were treated like gods by the people they met in Central and South America. When the Aztec king Montezuma II, ninth ruler of Tenochtitlan, met conquistador Hernán Cortés, he welcomed him and his army into the city and held a banquet in their honor, including providing them with some of the first chocolate that any European man had ever tasted. This was not the chocolate that we know and love today but instead a bitter brown drink that was typically reserved for royalty. It was this sort of roots level stuff that I hoped to find in Ecuador.

Now, our time in Ecuador was mostly spent in the Galápagos and the country's capital of Quito and we knew we weren't finding any sort of cacao plantations in either place. The Galápagos are windswept, barren, volcanic islands 600 miles into the Pacific Ocean and Quito sits at about 9,350 feet above sea level. Neither environment is suitable for growing chocolate trees. We'd have to go somewhere in between: still in the tropical mainland but at a much much lower elevation than Quito. In short we'd need to take a little road trip.

About two hours north and west of Quito is the village of Mindo, a community that seems to be built these days on ziplining, bird watching, tubing and butterfly gardens. There also happens to be a chocolate factory there named (inventively enough...) Mindo Chocolate. It was here we decided to head to learn more about chocolate in the place of its origin, and although I'm sure we didn't taste anything like the Cortés was fed in Tenochtitlan about five centuries ago, we got to taste plenty, including some of the bitterest liquid I've ever tasted.

Mindo Chocolate's factory, if you can call it that, is located in the back of the El Quetzal de Mindo restaurant and B&B just off the main drag in Mindo and it's worth a stop. We didn't partake in the ziplining or tubing down the rivers in Mindo but we did visit a butterfly farm and see some amazing hummingbirds. But the half hour to 45 minutes we spent at Mindo Chocolate was the best thing we did all day, and that includes our stop at the equator on the way back into town.

The tour at Mindo Chocolate takes you from the cacao plant in the ground all the way to the final product and you get to taste everything along the way, which is everything from enlightening to suck all the moisture out of your mouth bitter to I-can-understand-why-people-are-addicted-to-chocolate amazing. It's educational and delicious at the same time. What more could we want out of vacation?

Cacao beans being fermented before drying.

Every so often I think about the foods we eat and the drinks we drink and wonder what on Earth would make us put whatever it is we are eating or drinking in our mouths to begin with. Some foods are easy to understand: find an apple or mushroom on the ground and eat it; if you don't get sick then it's OK to eat again and if you do then stay away in future. Other foods that involve a fundamental transformation of the ingredient into something decidedly unappetizing make me think a little harder. Beer comes to mind here. After spending time in Mindo, chocolate definitely falls into the latter category too. For the record, I'm glad my predecessors on this planet tried both.

So how do we make the fruit of a tree into a chocolate bar? Or, if you are an Aztec, into a bitter drink that you only allowed royalty to drink? Let's see if I can explain. And terminology is a little bit important here. It all starts with the cacao tree which when mature grows cacao fruit or pods. There's a picture of some pods earlier in this post. They ripen about six months after flowers first appear on the tree and at that point they are harvested and cut open to reveal a series of white seeds called cacao beans. When we first started our tour at Mindo we were invited to pop one of these seeds into our mouths. They tasted sweet and fruity and felt (as we expected) a little slimy. They are not digestible in this form so we spit them out but these seeds are what hold the chocolate.

After the seeds are removed they are fermented for four days under banana leaves (see above photo). Apparently the fermentation removes some of the bitterness from the beans, which is important considering what we tasted later on in our tour. After four days the seeds are laid out to dry on wire mesh racks for about 15 days in the dry season and about twice that long during the rainy season. The result after this step? A surprisingly sweet and deep chocolatey snack. I'd like to say that I could sit down and gorge myself on these things but I suspect the pleasant taste I got out of one little nibble wouldn't continue if ate three or four of these things. And the chalk-like texture might ultimately be a problem.

This is the point in the process, I am assuming, that someone long ago put one of these things in his or her mouth and decided it was worth figuring out how this happened so they could, by some degree of trial and error, reverse engineer what nature had let happen naturally. So just to be clear here, what I think happened is that someone once upon a time found a brown thing on the ground, which turned out to be a dried seed of the cacao tree which had been, prior to drying out, fermented under banana leaves for a while, and took a taste. And they liked what they tasted and proceeded to figure things out from there. Make sense? Sounds reasonable to me.

At this point we still don't have chocolate. There are a couple of more steps. First the beans need to be roasted, which is done in a rotating cylinder that could easily fit in one corner of my living room. 30 minutes of heat applied while in the drum, then a rest for about two and a half hours and your beans are roasted. Kind of like coffee I guess. After that they are ready to be crushed and have the shells separated from the cocoa nibs. This takes place in a wind tunnel type apparatus about the same size as the roaster. Now that we have the nibs, we are pretty close to getting something resembling the chocolate we know and love.

The "factory": a room about the size of my living room where the beans are roasted and separated to nibs.

Next step? Grinding the cocoa nibs into a paste called chocolate mass. The paste is a transformation of the nibs into a semi liquid consisting of cocoa solids and cocoa butter which are on the verge of separating into their component parts. You can use the paste to make chocolate if you wish. Keep going and they will in fact separate. Cocoa butter is the fat component which is used to make white chocolate; cocoa powder is used to make hot chocolate for drinking or chocolate bars when it is combined with a fat like butter.

Centuries ago, the Aztecs likely got about as far as the grinding and separating process and sometimes might have added honey or some other naturally sweetened nectar to the powder or paste to make it sweeter. The Swiss picked up where the Aztecs left off, figuring out how to transform what the Spanish brought back from the new world into the chocolate bars we eat today.

So after all that learning, who's ready for some chocolate? Well if you are, you'll have to get some for yourself. Back in Ecuador I sure was and following our tour we got to try all of the eight varieties of bars that Mindo Chocolate produces. We also might have brought a few back with us to the United States.

But before we got a taste of the finished product, we were treated to a couple of tasting experiments. We were presented with a small plate which had on it a tiny plastic spoon with a cup of some chocolate liquid and a square of brownie sitting next to it. The liquid was pure cocoa without any of the butter and it was the most vile tasteless stuff I've ever called anything to do with chocolate. It tasted more like liquid metal than it did like chocolate. On the other hand, it tasted fantastic when it was combined with a small amount of ginger syrup, which was sort of the point of the exercise.

We were then asked to taste the brownie which mercifully WAS sweetened. In fact, it was way way way better than I ever could have hoped. If there's a better brownie on the face of this Earth, I'd like to see it because this thing was out of this world good. If brownies can generally be divided into fudge and cake categories, this was neither. It had all the richness and gooeyness of a fudge brownie but without being heavy like fudge brownies are. This thing was melt in your mouth amazing and I mean that literally. The secret? It was made with the paste that comes from grinding freshly roasted cocoa nibs. Everyone should make brownies this way from now on. This was the best thing I ate in Ecuador without a shadow of a doubt. Who knew I'd go all that way and end up raving about an all-American dessert.

Thus ended my chocolate education. For now. I'm richer for it. I suspect I'll be dining on more chocolate soon enough on the other side of the Atlantic. But that's potentially another story.

The world's best brownie.

I Love Boobies

Oh, come on! You didn't think I could visit a country that has three species of birds with the name boobies and not write a blog post with this title, did you? Wasn't happening. And get your minds out of the gutter.

Of all the different types of wildlife we were looking forward to seeing in the Galápagos Islands, we were perhaps more excited to see the birds known as blue footed boobies than any other species. Sure the iguanas and the sea lions and the flamingoes and the crabs were all very interesting, but we wanted to see boobies most of all. And not just any sort of boobies. Not the nazca boobies (although we saw them and they are gorgeous birds) or the red footed boobies (didn't see those; we didn't visit the right islands), just the blue footed ones. Sure, we'll take the rest but a trip to the Galápagos without seeing blue footed birds just would have been a huge disappointment. Spoiler alert: we were not disappointed.

So why blue footed boobies? Well, it's certainly not just so I can write a blog post with the word boobies written about 50 times and yes, I promise, I'll lay off that joke. Soon.

I don't know how many David Attenborough and National Geographic specials I have watched over the years about the Galápagos, but invariably the stars of the show are the blue footed boobies. They are a little comical looking; have slightly ridiculous names and mating rituals; and look like they are about as likely to land on the surface of the Earth safely as our Avianca flight back from Guayaquil to Quito which aborted the landing twice (yikes!) before decided to land on the opposite end of the runway (not fun). 

And of course, it's because they have blue feet. How many other species of animal are you going to see with blue feet?

A blue footed booby plus chick.

I know what your first question about these birds is (because it was one of ours): why are they called boobies? Well, first of all it has nothing to do with breasts. Sorry to burst your bubble on that one. Our naturalist guide, Omar, explained to us that it's an English bastardization of the Spanish word for clumsy, which is how the early Spanish sailors referred to the birds because of their odd walking gait and their not so graceful landings. Turns out that story checks out, which is a good thing since as a naturalist he's supposed to know what he's talking about here. The actual word that caused the boobies to get their name is bobo, which translates literally (according to Google Translate) as "fool."

If you visit the Galápagos Islands today, you may very well think these birds are fools for their complete lack of fear of man. I mean you can literally walk right up to them and they'll stare at you in disbelief that you mean to do them any harm; we didn't, of course, but early sailors had an easy time catching and eating them. Today, as it turns out, life in the Islands is pretty cushy for the boobies. Other than maybe frigatebirds, the Galápagos hawk and maybe a human-introduced rat or two, the boobies have no natural enemies. And they are only likely to get picked on by the three predators I just mentioned when they are newborn chicks. Beyond that, they can fend for themselves.

My expectation in visiting the Galápagos this year was that I would get to see one or two boobies and then hear stories about the habits that we wouldn't be able to see, mostly on the courtship, mating and nesting side of life. I figured all that stuff would be done out of sight or harm's way. Certainly not in full view of a group of American, British, Canadian and Australian tourists who would predictably stare, point and take as many pictures as possible before we had to move on down the trail.

My expectations were wrong. Our first land encounter (we'd seen them in the air previously) with a blue footed booby was on Isla Lobos just off the west coast of Isla San Cristóbal. We came across an adult with two chicks standing on the rocks by the ocean with the other parent presumably off fishing for food for one or maybe both chicks. This is what we came to see. Picture after picture was snapped. We even found a booby nearby sitting on a nest. Very cool!! What's next?

Well, next came the kind of thing you get to see in the Galápagos: a very close look at a pair of booby couples mating. Like right next to us, maybe three feet away, oblivious to our presence as all wildlife (well, except the Sally Lightfoot crabs maybe) in the island chain treats humans standing right next to them. This is the absolute beauty of the Galápagos. Nature is so up front and in your face in all its glory. It's literally like being in one of those David Attenborough or National Geographic specials. This stuff doesn't happen away in the bush or behind a wall of cacti or anything, it's all right there for you to see it.

Perhaps it's worth spending a few minutes on the booby mating dance after seeing it happen because it's just amazing. And not surprisingly, it's all about the feet. Generally speaking, the bluer the feet, the more attractive the mate. I've read that if you starve a booby for a couple of days, the color disappears from its feet. Blue feet = healthy mate. Pretty simple, right? 

Mating takes place between a pair of birds and they are "monogamous" for one season, although mating for a few months with one bird before moving onto greener pastures or playing the field isn't exactly monogamy now is it? The mating ritual starts when the male gets the attention of the female and approaches her, with his shrill but muted whistles being answered with some clicking noises from his potential mate. Following that there may be some twig bringing from both the male and female, where one bird will pick up a stick in mock nest making and drop it at the feet of his or her belle or beau or maybe some wing-spreading and sky-pointing, like in the (somewhat fuzzy) picture immediately below.

But in order to woo a female, a male booby needs some pretty blue feet. Nothing else is really going to work. So he'll spend a lot of time showing off his shoes, mostly by performing some sort of high-stepping ritual designed to call maximum attention to his tootsies. The prospective couple will then walk together to see what kind of color they have and circle around each other doing the same sort of checking out routine. Eventually the female will signal her interest or lack thereof to the male and I guess it's game on from there (although we missed any sort of X-rated booby action on our trip).

Sometimes, there's a competition between males for a female. The pair in the third picture in this post briefly had another male trying to horn in on his buddy's action in an attempt to steal his girl. For a while, it looked like she might ditch her initial suitor for Johnny-come-lately but ultimately the first man in got his girl, although she didn't look too enthused to me, like I know as a rookie booby watcher. I guess he must have had some attractive feet, or at least more so than his rival.

From there, it's a matter of getting pregnant and laying a couple of eggs and in the most booby-like fashion, they just make a nest right on the flat ground where any sort of prey can get at it with no sort of protection except a ring of bird poop and one of the parents staying home at all times. You can actually tell how old a booby nest is by the concentration of poop around the nest. Awesome stuff, you guys!

Barely visible ring of poop = new nest. 

Bright white ring of poop = chicks are almost ready to hatch.

Typically, a brood of booby chicks will be just two birds. The 'rents are generally speaking going to be happy if one of the two makes it to adulthood. Yes, in what is the cruelest truth about booby society, the birds have a second chick as an insurance policy. Maybe the first one will get sick or snatched or injured and won't make it. In that case, the younger sibling is up and will get fed like his or her older brother or sister used to. 

This is not unusual in the bird world. Survival of the fittest is the name of the game here and parents are willing to settle for one of their two kids growing up to make something of themselves rather than having just one and having something go wrong. The truth is most booby couples can't fetch enough fish for a family of four. They have to make a sacrifice, which is typically the weaker of the two kids. There was an especially heartbreaking couple of chicks we came across where one was clearly smaller than the other and the larger was stepping on his or her kid brother or sister. Now maybe it was an accident but on the other hand, life is cruel, folks. Even when the perpetuator of that cruelty is a comical looking blue footed bird.

A booby family. Odds are they aren't all making it. 

You still feeling bad about the two chick system? Me too. It's not nice to think about.

During our four days in the Islands, we saw boobies in a lot of places. But not just on land. The booby is for sure a bird which means like most birds, it flies. And in the air, it is as graceful as it is clumsy on the land. Watching boobies fish is a rare treat. These things are amazing anglers. They circle in the air while looking straight down into the water. Once they have spotted a fish below the surface of the water, they gather themselves before folding their wings into their bodies and assuming the shape of a dart and descend at up to 60 miles per hour towards the sea. They hit the water flawlessly every time. If they were in the Olympic diving competition, they'd draw perfect 10s every time. As awesome as it was seeing these awkward clowns roam about on land, it was equally awesome watching them hunt for fish.

We saw some cool animals in the Galápagos and I could have spent some time writing a lot about every species we saw. In the interest of (somewhat) brevity, I've elected to turn the spotlight onto what likely are one of the most fun creatures you'll see there and leave it at that. This is my last post about what we saw on the Islands, although there's probably something lurking around here that talks about what we saw off the Islands. I hope if you are interested in heading 600 miles west of the coast of Ecuador, you'll go see and appreciate what we saw there just as much as we did. Incredible experience, especially with the boobies. For sure, I love the boobies. 

OK, now I'm done with the joke.

The Equator...Sort Of

This post is written in honor of the first time I have ever crossed over the equator on the surface of the Earth. And no, that's not me in the photo above; it's a statue. Enjoy!

The equator, that imaginary line which marks the division between the northern and southern hemispheres, runs through 13 countries in Africa, Asia and South America. These thirteen countries are, in alphabetical order, Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Kenya, Kiribati (who knew there was a Kiribati?), the Maldives, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, the Republic of the Congo (yes, there are two Congos) and Uganda. Think of it as the halfway point down the Earth. Or up the Earth if you are from the southern hemisphere.

If there is a country on the planet where the equator has more caché than in any other spot on the globe, it's Ecuador, a nation whose very name is derived from the zero latitude line's name. So it would seem natural that the government of Ecuador would want to build some kind of spectacular edifice to the fact that they, more than any other country in the world, are number one when it comes to the equator, right?

Actually, the notion of any government in the world wanting to build an equator monument strikes me as a little silly and a complete waste of money. Nonetheless, that's just what Ecuador did in 1936 to commemorate the 200 year anniversary of the French Geodesic Mission, an expedition to Ecuador (although it wasn't called Ecuador way back in 1736; it was called the Territory of Quito and it was owned by Spain) to measure the length of a degree of latitude at the equator. I'm not sure Ecuador really cared about the Mission's anniversary all that much; they probably just wanted a tourist attraction, although that is complete speculation on my part.

45 or so years after the original structure was built, the Prefecture of the Province of Pichincha (the province where Ecuador's capital of Quito is located) upped the ante a bit by replacing the 1936 monument with a bigger (and presumably better and more spectacular) monument. The place where this monument is located today is called Ciudad Mitad del Mundo or the City of the Middle of the World. Poetic, right?

Ecuador's equator monument. It was gorgeous the entire day except for the time we had to take this picture.

The 1980s version of the equator monument is pretty grand (see above despite the dark picture). It consists of a very large four sided, tapering podium supporting an enormous globe at the end of a procession of statues of of folks who participated in the original Geodesic Mission. The monument is not the only built item within the site. There are pavilions celebrating the contributions of Spain, France and Ecuador to the mapping of the equator as well as restaurants, stores, a bullring (go figure!) and a line on the ground representing the equator where tourists can put one foot in each hemisphere. It's sort of an all-in celebration of the equator lending its name to the country of Ecuador.

But there's a problem with all this. The actual monument doesn't sit on the equator. 

You are kidding me, right??? 

Nope! I guess the tools they had in 1936 to provide an accurate location of the line weren't good enough because they missed it by about 250 meters, which is a bit more than 800 feet or about three football fields (minus endzones) for those of you who measure distance in football fields. 

Hmm. I know what you are thinking. And just so we have this straight...the government of Ecuador spent a bunch of cash to build something which ultimately the local prefecture knocked down so they could spend even more money on something bigger (and therefore automatically better) and the whole thing is wrong??? That's correct. You got that just right.

The real middle of the world, if you are heading out from Quito to wherever you are headed, is just a bit further up the road. Go past the Mitad del Mundo, drive a bit up the hill and follow the road as it curves to the left and you will see a sign advertising the Intiñan Museum. Take a left here. NOW you have arrived at the equator. I think.

What you find at the Intiñan Museum, depending on your perspective, is a campy museum designed to appeal to foreign tourists who hold the equator and the Amazon jungle in some sort of mythical magical esteem or the most awesome and spectacular $4 attraction on the planet. Put me in the latter camp. I loved this place. We got every cent and more of value out of our 30 minutes to an hour here.

So what does your four bucks get you? Well, not only admission to the place where you can stand with one foot in each hemisphere for real (take THAT Mitad del Mundo!) but you get guided insight into the indigenous tribes and animals of the Amazon and you get to test out the equator's powers for yourself. Want to balance an egg on a nail? Or see water swirl in two different directions based on which side of the equator line you are standing on? Or watch people close their eyes and try to walk a straight line but fail because of the equator? Step right up and lay your money down, folks!! This is the place. You can even get a certificate with your name on it if you manage to make the egg stand upright on the nail (I failed).

Balancing and egg on a nail at the equator. Apparently not one of my superpowers.

OK, so I didn't really fall for all of this in the way it seems. Trying to walk with your eyes closed on a straight line to me seems like pretty much an impossible task whether or not you are on the equator. So it's no surprise that people couldn't do it. The big surprise with this one was that the participants seemed surprised that they failed BECAUSE of the equator. I'm also skeptical of the so called Coriolis effect which causes water to swirl noticeably counterclockwise two feet into the northern hemisphere and noticeably clockwise four feet to the south. Our guide admitted that this effect is only noticeable far away from the equator and pretty much told us she was faking it but challenged us to figure out the ruse. I haven't bothered. It doesn't matter that much to me.

As for the egg on the nail stuff...people with (apparently) greater balancing ability than me achieved what was an impossible task for yours truly. I don't know what that means, although admittedly everyone that I saw succeed at this task used a different nail than I did. Not trying to be a sore loser; I believe my inability to make an egg stand on its end was all mine. But some of the other tricks seems suspect so my usual trusting nature is put to the test here.

The real treat for me at the Intiñan Museum was not the cheap equator-attributed parlor tricks or the fact that I got to put my left foot in the southern hemisphere and my right in the northern hemisphere and get a thumbs up picture with a cheesy grin on my face (see above). Although admittedly, I was pleased with myself for this picture. The real attraction for me was learning a little more about what goes on within the borders of Ecuador, although this was a little hit and miss too.

A live snake, some wooden toucans, a couple of painted parrots and a stuffed cat as a way of showing me the fauna of the Amazon jungle didn't do much for me here although the discussion we had right before that about the local fish that are attracted to ammonia was extremely educational. If I ever go swimming in the Amazon river (and why would I ever do that unless I absolutely had to do it to survive or get away from something dangerous), there's no way I'm urinating while I breast stroke away from whatever's chasing me.

But the best thing here was even more grisly than the fish discussion: SHRUNKEN HEADS!!!

I have never that I can remember seen a shrunken head before visiting Ecuador, although it's quite possible I've blocked that out. According to the Intiñan Museum, the only people in South America that engage in this practice are located in Ecuador and apparently the museum guides have no idea exactly how the locals do it. They have captured the generally macabre process in a very cheerful mural shown in the photograph above. They know the recipe for a mini head involves removing the skull from the wrapping of skin (eek!); followed by some sort of cooking; then sewing the mouth shut; and finally putting some hot rocks inside the cooked envelope. But it's the exact mix of the cooking broth that so effectively preserves the head that they don't understand.

The local tribe shrinks heads both of their slain enemies and their most important deceased fellow tribesmen. The Intiñan Museum showed us two: one on display all the time (seen in the picture above next to the shrunken sloth head, which apparently was used for practice) and one of a former chief which is kept in a wooden box and which we were forbidden to photograph. The heads are for sure tiny but they look more ape-like than human (although I guess we are apes too). The skin has a generally unhealthy sort of purple-gray color and the nose seems more flattened than a human nose. 

The local Amazon tribesmen warriors sometimes wear these things as necklaces to show off their prowess in vanquishing their enemies and apparently at one time there was a hot black market for them which was causing the locals to kill people just to make the heads for sale. I think for my part I'd be good never being near one of these again and I certainly wouldn't ever want a necklace with one on, but I'm glad I got to see a couple. Shrunken heads, cheesy dioramas and stupid equator tricks = four dollars well spent.

I am fairly positive I won't have that many opportunities to cross the equator on the surface of the planet again. Of the 12 other equator countries, only one (Uganda) is on my wish list (Brazil is not, although the wish list keeps changing so you never know...) so this past month could conceivably be it. If it is, I savor this experience and I'm glad the Intiñan Museum was there for me to gorge myself on equator-ness. I also know I got good value for my money while I was there, even if my own two-bit research on the place cast some doubt as to whether I was really at the equator. Do I believe the Museum or Apple? Dilemma!

We checked the Intiñan Museum's equator line with the iPhone. Uh oh...

What's For Dinner (In Ecuador)?

One of the things I like to proclaim louder and prouder than most things in my life is that I have no regrets. Generally speaking, that is completely a true statement. I'm totally a butterfly effect kind of guy; I believe any small change in my past might have had disastrous consequences to my present. And to be honest I wouldn't want to take a chance on changing anything big about my past if it affected my present. I just plain like where I am in life right now. So I feel I cannot regret any past decisions.

But I have a confession to make. I have to admit that I have a very teensy tiny regret or two about the places I've been in the past three plus years and some of them have to do with food. Let me explain. I went out with my friends Mike and Bryan the last night we were in Munich determined to sample some pork knuckles. We chickened out. Not just one of us; all three. Over pork knuckles. Can you believe that? What a total hypocrite. 

But then less than a year later it happened again. That time I avoided the snails in Marrakech's Jemma El Fna after talking about them enough to make it all but impossible to renege. But I did anyway. The snails haunt me more than the pork knuckles.

Fast forward to 2016 and I'm in Ecuador and the dish I've been claiming I'm going to eat without question is Guinea pig. No doubt about it. No turning back. Not backing out this time. Guinea pig is for dinner! For sure! I'm having some. And this time, I didn't back down.

My Guinea pig, whom our new friend Heather named Freddo, maybe to make me feel a bit guilty. It didn't work.

Sound strange? Well, honestly, it might be a bit. And not because I (and everyone else in Ecuador who eats these things) am eating something that looks like your childhood pet named Fluffy.

Long before the Spanish reached South America and started stealing and killing pretty much everything they could find to steal and kill, indigenous peoples in the area were eating Guinea pigs, which are called cuy in the local language Kichwa after the noise the rodents make when they are sitting around doing...well, mostly nothing. The Andes Mountains are a difficult place to raise traditional livestock such as pigs, chickens or cattle, but sustaining a family of these small creatures in the average everyday home is pretty easy. They can eat pretty much anything that is discarded from a meal eaten by people, they don't take up much space and they can multiply like crazy.

All that made them ideal for families to keep a few around for meat when times got tough or in most cases perhaps just for everyday food since I imagine life for folks trying to survive in the mountains of Ecuador under the Incas or whomever else might be in charge was probably pretty rough anyway. Today, the animals are considered a delicacy and people pay top dollar for these things in restaurants whether they be roasted, baked or deep fried. If you are paying $10 (Ecuador uses the American dollar as currency) for a plate of chicken with rice, expect to pay about triple that for a whole cuy. Guinea pigs are so revered in Ecuador that the painting of the Last Supper in Quito's main cathedral has Jesus and his disciples dining on them. Some real poetic license there I think.

My guinea pig experience happened on a Thursday night at Mama Clorinda restaurant at the corner Reina Victoria and José Calama, just one block northwest of Plaza Foch on the northern side of Quito. The restaurant came recommended both by our hotel and by our driver, Javier, who picked us up at the airport upon our initial arrival in Ecuador the previous Saturday night. Two unsolicited recommendations had to mean something good, right?

Mama Clorinda deep fries their Guinea pigs and serves them in the traditional flattened (maybe you could call it butterflied?) style with head and all along with a side of potatoes slathered with some sort of peanut based sauce, avocado, tomato and a couple of slices of hard boiled egg. They also supply you with a pair of thin disposable plastic gloves because honestly there ain't no way you are getting all that flesh off that tiny skeleton with a knife and fork. The only way to get any meat at all off it is to pick up the carcass and start pulling it off the bones with your teeth.

Tucking in to some cuy at Mama Clorinda's. The plastic gloves are an essential accessory.

So here's the part where I tell you these things taste like chicken because that's what all non-traditional meat tastes like, right? Well, yes, that's what I'm doing because honestly they do. I'd describe the taste and texture of the meat of my fried Guinea pig as sort of like fattier chicken thighs. And I don't mean succulent slow cooked chicken, I mean barely just roasted enough chicken thigh meat from the underside of the bird that I usually forget about when I strip a cooked chicken.

The back legs were the best part and I realize there isn't much meat on the legs of a rodent (they aren't rabbits with huge hind legs for leaping) but the leg meat was the easiest to pull off the bone, was actually delicious in spots where it was a little drier and there was more meat than anywhere else. Unfortunately, a Guinea pig has only two back legs and when all is said and done there is no more than a half mouthful of meat per leg.

The most frustrating part to eat was the main body of the animal, which constituted the center four pieces of my dish shown in the picture above. The meat, skin and bones over the ribcage of the cuy were maybe a quarter of an inch thick and the flesh was nothing more than a fatty membrane stretched over the creature's frame. In truth I tried to get nourishment out of this part of the meal and was thwarted each time. The batter or whatever it was on the skin didn't make for any sort of good eating chicharones either. Maybe I'm just not a skilled eater of little animals with tiny skeletons; eating these things is extremely fussy and ultimately I may be a failure at this in life.

After I'd gnawed at the body for maybe 15 minutes or so and devoured all the "succulent" leg meat that my dish would give up to me, I was left with a deep fried head of the animal, complete with ears and its teeth still in its mouth and obviously visible on a quick tete-a-tete inspection. We had a guide, Andres, our last two days in Quito who told us his 96 year old grandmother loves the head of the Guinea pig. He even implied that might have contributed to her long life while admitting he couldn't come to terms with eating a cuy's noggin. I'm with Andres. When I took the gloves off I left the head unbitten. Just too much for me to deal with there.

A couple of days after my meal, I was scolded by a local a little for eating Guinea pig in the city. She claimed these animals need to be eaten in smaller towns where they can be prepared properly. She might be right and I guess if I ever find myself in a small town in Ecuador near someone cooking up some roasted cuy I'll talk myself into giving it another go, although I'm still not sure about the head. If I never get another chance, at least I didn't refuse to partake in this dish. No regrets on this one.

Freddo about 20 minutes after his arrival at our table. No way I was eating the head.