Here is a long awaited shot of my site from across one of the many valleys around the place. Dificil to tell in this photo but on the wooded slope of that there ridgeline live almost ten thousand people! The little lump-hill to the right of the pic, where the ridge appears to go up and then down before going up again... that is the place where the Cruz is and where I've taken some of those sunset photos that you've seen over the last few months. If you follow with your eyes the slope fo the city down the hill to the left you can just make out the little nubbin of the church tower...that's the one they light up all crazy at night, and where the thousands of golondrinas (swallows) hang out at night, just waiting to poop on the head of an unsuspecting nocturne.

It is supposed to be summer in El Oro but we actually had a night of rain the other week which everyone was commenting on the next day. QUE RARO they would say. We aren't supposed to see precipitation again until November or December... well I blame El Nino then. Anyways, here is a misty montain view out of my bedroom window one particularly foggy morning.

I said I would get you some pics of the fascinating folklore songanddance demonstration at that parroquia that I visited the other day. Well here are two shots from my favorite act of the day: Fourteen youngins dressed as old-uns, hobbling out with their bent hunchbacks and ZZ Top beards and be-pillowed booties ad walkig canes. And then...the music starts. It's some old timey style music that would have down the Soggy Bottom Boys proud, and the old fogeys start swaying and creaking to the tunes, partnerign up and hanging to their canes for dear life. And then some different music starts up. And the throw the canes to the ground... and they really start getting into it! An they're freaking getting DOWN with their bad old-timey selves, and I got the urge to get up and GET DOWN with them too, but I was there for a photo safari mission and couldn't disappoint my counterparts at home...

By the end of the last number, the seven couples were pairing up and GRINDING on eachother like their great great grandkids probably do in the discotecas nowadays. What a fun ride back in time. Props to the Virgin of the Remedios for giving life to the ancient ones once again, and man could they shake their moneymakers!

Last but most undeniably not LEAST, I stole this glance from my bus window while riding the nine hours from Cuenca to Quito yesterday. One of the southernmost denizens of the "Avenue of the Volcanoes," mighty Chimborazo is the highest mountain in Ecuador. Its summit, due to the Equatorial bulge, also happens to be the point on the planet's surface furthest from the center of the Earth. Further than the top of Everest, although Everest is more vertical feet higher in relation to sea level... I have a rough-hewn plan to get myself up this B E A S T in perhaps December. Better start training!!! Good thing Mom is bringing my grappling hook. She gets here late night tomorrow, and I can't wait!
Mountainjedi, over and out.